LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



ODOEDElSDflE 



PRESBYTERIANS 



AND 



THE REVOLUTION 



BY t6e 

eev. w. p. Jbreed, D.D, 



'^ih '^- 



PHILADELPHIA : 

PKESBYTERIAN BOAKD OF PUBLICATION 

1334 CHESTNUT STREET. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the y^ar 1876, by 

THE TRUSTEES OF THE 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



"Westcott & Thomson, 
Stereotypers and Elcctrotypers, Philada. 



c/3<r 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTEK I. 

PAGE 

Pkesbyterians and the Centennial 5 

CHAPTEE II. 
Pkesbyterianism a Representative Eepublican 
Form of Government 24 

CHAPTER III. 
Presbyterianism Odious to Tyrants 34 

CHAPTER IV. 
Presbyterian Spirit in Harmony with that of 
the Revolution 41 

CHAPTER V. 
The Westmoreland County Resolutions 58 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Mecklenburg Declaration 65 

CHAPTER VII. 

Presbyterian Zeal and Suffering 79 

3 



4 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

PAGE 

FoRMAi. Action of the Pkesbyterian Church 108 

CHAPTER IX. 
Declaration op Independence and Dr. John 

WiTHERSPOON 136 

CHAPTER X. 
Organization of the Confederacy 167 

CHAPTER Xi. 
Monument to Witherspoon 180 



PRESBYTERIANS 

AND 

THE EETOLUTIOIT 



CHAPTER I. 

PRESBYTERIANS AND THE CENTENNIAL. 

TT was to be expected that the approach of 
-*- the one hundredth anniversary of our 
nation's birth would awaken a profound in- 
terest in the public mind and give rise to 
measures for a commemorative recognition in 
some degree befitting the occasion. 

Of necessity the national thought reverts 
to those stirring times that so grandly tried 
the souls of men and issued in the creation 
of this gigantic republic. Again on our eye 
flashes the light of those guns that laid the 
martyrs low on Lexington Green and at 



6 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

Concord Bridge. Again to our ear comes 
the report of " the shot heard round the 
world." The heroic devotion of those men 
who, for the sake of a princijDle, so calmly 
offered their breasts to the deadly leaden 
hail, stirs with a fresh impulse the patriotic 
virtues within us and lifts our manhood 
higher in our esteem. Anew there passes 
across the field of our vision that grand pro- 
cession of sages and statesmen and military 
heroes, and we thank the God of nations for 
a generation of men so fitted for the exigencies 
of such a day and hour. 

History has abundantly verified the in- 
sight of Chatham as displayed in his fervid 
eloquence in the House of Lords, in January, 
1775 : 

" When your lordships look at the papers 
transmitted us from America, when you 
consider their decency, firmness and wisdom, 
yon cannot but respect their cause and wish 
to make it your own. 

" For myself I must avow that in all my 



THE REVOLUTION. 7 

reading — and I have read Tliucydides and 
have studied and admired the master-states 
of the world — for solidity of reason, force of 
sagacity and wisdom of conclusion under a 
comj)lication of difficult circumstances, no 
nation or body of men can stand in prefer- 
ence to the general congress at Philadelphia. 
The histories of Greece and Home give us 
nothing equal to it." 

The bustle also of the tow^n-meeting breaks 
on the ear. We hear the broad-browed yeo- 
men discussing the foundation principles of 
free government, and closing the discussion 
with the high resolve for liberty or death. 
The provincial congress gathers, and thrills 
with the burning sentences that spring from 
the lips of an Adams or a Patrick Henry. 
The Continental Congress assembles, doubtful 
of its j)owers, uncertain as to what wisdom 
demands, hindered by countless obstacles, 
only one thing clear, and that is their inflexi- 
ble determination not to submit to the tyran- 
nies of the British king and his parliament. 



8 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

For a time apparent chaos reigns ; but 
through all the will of God is working 
toward order and organization, and the 
result is, first, victory in the field, second, 
a confederacy of the colonies, and third, 
that wonderful embodiment of human ability 
and ripe statesmanship, the national Consti- 
tution. 

"The structure," says Judge Story, "has 
been erected by architects of consummate 
skill and fidelity. Its foundations are solid ; 
its compartments beautiful as well as useful ; 
its arrangements are full of wisdom and 
order, and its defences are impregnable from 
without. 

" In the sunshine of peace and in the 
storm of war the Constitution of the United 
States of America has had a severe but im- 
partial, trial. It has amj)ly fulfilled the ex- 
pectation of its friends and completely dissi- 
pated the fears of its early opponents. 

"As a great rule of political conduct it has 
guided the country, through unprecedented 



THE REVOLUTION. 9 

political vicissitudes and perilous revolution- 
ary commotions among the nations, to a con- 
dition at once so prosperous and commanding 
tliat it has wholly outstripped all foresight 
and calculation. 

"When we look at the vast theatre on 
which, under the influence of its provisions, 
our maritime trade has been employed, the 
freedom and prosperity we enjoy at home, 
the respect entertained for our country 
abroad, our thankfulness to God ought to 
know no bounds." 

In his oration at the late centennial cele- 
bration at Concord, Mr. George William 
Curtis well said : 

"At the end of a century we can see the 
work of this day as our fathers could not ; 
we can see that then the final movement 
began of a process long and i^^nonscioasly 
preparing, which was to entrust liberty to 
new forms, and institutions that seemed full 
of happy promise for mankind. And now 
for nearly a century what was formerly called 



10 PEESBYTERIANS AND 

the experiment of a representative republic 
of imperial extent and power lias been tried. 
Has it fulfilled the hopes of its founders and 
the just expectations of mankind? I have 
already glanced at its early and fortunate 
conditions, and we know how vast and splen- 
did were its early growth and development. 
Our material statistics soon dazzled the world. 
Europe no longer sneered, but gazed in won- 
der, waiting and watching. Our population 
doubled every fifteen years, and our wealth 
every ten years. Every little stream among 
the hills turned a mill ; and the great inland 
seas, bound by the genius of Clinton to the 
ocean, became the highway of boundless 
commerce, the path of unprecedented empire. 
Our farms w^ere the granary of other lands. 
Our cotton-fields made England rich. Still, 
we chased the whale in the Pacific Ocean 
and took fish in the tumbling seas of Labra- 
dor. We hung our friendly lights along 
thousands of miles of coast to tempt the 
trade of every clime ; and w^herever, on the 



THE REVOLUTION. 11 

dim rim of the globe there was a harbor, it 
was white with American sails. Meanwhile, 
at home, the political foreboding of Federal- 
ism had died away, and its very wail seemed 
a tribute to the pacific glories of the land. 

The ornament of beauty is suspect, 

A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air. 

"The government was felt to be but a 
hand of protection and blessing; labor was 
fully employed; capital was secured; the 
army was a jest ; enterprise was pushing 
through the Alleghanies, grasping and set- 
tling the El Dorado of the prairies, and still, 
having traversed the wilderness, reached out 
toward the E-ocky Mountains, and reversing 
the voyage of Columbus, re- discovered the 
Old World from the New." 

With a career behind us such as this, and 
with such scenes of prosperity around us, it 
was impossible that the hundredth anniver- 
sary of the nation's birth should be allowed 
to pass without some marked recognition of 



12 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

the event, at least on the part of the city 
where our independence was born and our 
government brought into being. 

It is now certain that the year 1876 will see 
hundreds of thousands of our own nation, and 
crowds from other nations, of every kindred, 
tribe and tongue, thronging the city of Phil- 
adelphia to take part in a succession of ex- 
citing services commemorative of the time 
when our fathers, under the inspiration of 
principles derived from God's holy word, at 
the ringing of that bell that proclaimed 
"liberty throughout all the land, unto all 
the inhabitants thereof," and chanting as 
they marched, "All men are created equal, 
and are endowed by their Creator with cer- 
tain inalienable rights, among which are life, 
liberty and the pursuit of happiness," crossed 
the Jordan from colonial bondage to na- 
tional freedom. 

Then, as in a photograph, will be held up 
to the world's gaze our own broad land ; this 
Atlantic Slope and that Pacific Slope, with 



THE REVOLUTION. 13 

that boundless intervening valley "well 
watered everywhere like the land of Egypt, 
as thou eomest unto Zoar;" blessed with 
" the precious things of heaven, the dew and 
the deep that coucheth beneath, the precious 
fruits brought forth by the sun, the precious 
things put forth by the moon, the chief 
things of the ancient mountains and the 
precious things of the lasting hills, the pre- 
cious things of the earth and fullness there- 
of, and the good- will of Him that dwelt in 
the bush ;" that imperial platform of com- 
monwealths, inseparably interlocked together, 
ribanded to one another by majestic rivers 
and pressed down in their places by ever- 
lasting mountains, swarming with forty mil- 
lions of people, humming with the music of 
countless industries, adorned with arts that 
vie with those of the nations across the sea, 
dotted over with schools, seminaries, colleges 
and universities where our sons are " as 
plants growing up in their youth and our 
daughters like corner-stones polished after 



14 PRESBYTiERIANS AND 

the similitude of a palace/' abounding from 
lake to gulf and from ocean to ocean with 
Sabbath-schools, and with church edifices 
whose spires point to heaven, and glorified 
with countless hospitals and homes for the 
friendless, and other institutions of Christian 
charity : 

" A glorious land, 

With broad arms stretched from shore to shore, 
The proud Pacific chafes her strand, 

She hears the loud Atlantic roar ; 
And nurtured in her ample breast, 

How many a goodly prospect lies, 
In nature's wildest grandeur drest, 

Enameled with her loveliest dyes !" 

When the project for the celebration had 
taken practicable shape, and it had become 
certain that a great "international exposi- 
tion " was to be held which should present an 
epitome of our national productions, a group- 
ing of all the agencies, instrumentalities, ele- 
ments, products and results of our American 
civilization, challenging the attention of the 
world to the condition of mechanic art and 
fine art, agricultural interests, educational 



THE REVOLUTION. 15 

institutions, literature and science among us, 
the question very naturally arose, What of 
religion f Is religion to be ignored as a 
thing of naught on such an occasion ? Re- 
ligion, in a land where nearly every seventh 
person occupies a seat at some evangeli- 
cal communion-table; religion, that had so 
large an agency in the revolution ; religion, 
that has done more for our civilization and 
for the common weal than any other agency, 
if not more than all the others put together, 
— shall it have no part in the grand celebra- 
tion, no voice in the general jubilee ? 

To ask the question was to answer it. No 
enlightened Christian but felt that the Church 
in our land would be chargeable with shame- 
ful remissness if it allowed the mere secular- 
ities of life to monopolize the honors of the 
hour, and refused or neglected to give God 
the glory. Accordingly, all, or nearly all, 
of the religious denominations in the country 
have taken measures in one way or another 
to call attention to their services severally in 



16 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

the great work of helping on the weal of the 
nation. 

This being so, how could Presbyterians 
fail to take their part on such an occasion ? 
How could they justify themselves to them- 
selves and to the system they so fondly cher- 
ish if they alone remained inert, and, instead 
of blending their denominational zeal with 
their patriotism, allowed their fervor as cit- 
izens to monopolize all their thoughts and 
energies ? 

On such an occasion who will condemn, 
what magnanimous spirit will not commend 
the act, if we as Presbyterians accept the 
opportunity to inquire into and set forth the 
services rendered by Presbyterianism in the 
cause of our country ? 

There is no call upon us to disparage any 
other body of co-workers in the cause 
of human emancipation. If our Lutheran 
brethren remind us that the illustrious leader 
whose name they bear was the first in the 
great Reformation to smite and break the 



THE REVOLUTION. 17 

cliain that held the human mind in bondagey 
we, with all our hearts, will thank God with 
them for the services which that heroic man 
was called to render. But for the Reforma- 
tion led by Luther, there had been no Revo- 
lution led by Washington. And our Episco- 
pal brethren may well glory in the fact that 
Washington was an Ej^iscopalian, as was also 
the pre-eminent George Mason, successor of 
Washington as representative in the Virginia 
Convention in 1776. Nor will our Baptist 
brethren, always the champions of liberty, 
civil and religious, forbid our glorying in our 
cause, for we glory with them in the name 
of Roger Williams, who, far in advance of 
his times, delivered the golden oracle, " The 
civil magistrate should restrain crime, but 
never control opinion," and whose biography 
has been faithfully recorded by a Presbyte- 
rian pen. ''And John Wesley," writes Mr. 
Bancroft, " on getting the tidings of the bat- 
tles of Lexington and Concord, tliought that 
silence on his part would be a sin against 



18 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

God, against his country and against his 
own soul ; and waiting but one day, he wrote 
severally to Dartmouth and Lord North ;" 
and among other things he said : 

" In spite of all my long-rooted prejudices, 
I cannot avoid thinking these an oppressed 
people asking for nothing more than their 
legal rights, and that in the most modest 
and inoffensive manner that the nature of 
the thing will allow. 

"Is it common sense to use force toward 
the Americans ? They are strong ; they are 
valiant ; they are one and all enthusiasts — 
enthusiasts for liberty — calm, deliberate en- 
thusiasts. 

" They are terribly united ; they think 
they are contending for their wives, children 
and liberty." 

As to the Puritans of New England, their 
heroic devotion, sacrifices and services are too 
well known and too widely acknowledged to 
fear assault from any quarter. Truth to his- 
tory, indeed, constrains the record that the 



THE REVOLUTION. 19 

Puritankm of ISTew England embosomed a 
large element of Presbyterianism. '' It is 
estimated," writes Dr. Charles Hodge in 
his " Constitutional History of the Presby- 
terian Church in the United States of 
America/' "that about twenty-two thousand 
two hundred emigrants arrived in New Eng- 
land before 1640. Cotton Mather tells us 
that previous to that same year four thou- 
sand Presbyterians had arrived." In another 
place, when speaking of the union effected 
between the Congregationalists and Presby- 
terians in London about the year 1690, he 
says: "The same union, and on the same 
terms, had subsisted between these two de- 
nominations in New England for ^many dec- 
ades of years' — that is, almost from the first 
settlement of the country." 

Accordingly, Increase Mather begged King 
William to consider that "in New England 
they differ from other plantations ; they are 
called Congregational and Presbyterian ; so 
that such a governor will not suit with the 



20 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

people of New England, as may be very 
proper for other English plantations. 

" Of the two thousand Presbyterian minis- 
ters cast out of the Church of England by 
the Act of Uniformity, a considerable num- 
ber, it is said, found a refuge in New Eng- 
land." 

The Eev. J. B. Dales, D. D., of the United 
Presbyterian Church, in his discourse at the 
Tercentenary Celebration of Presbyterian- 
ism,* held in Philadelphia in 1872, said : 

" The Puritans of England were long after 
their rise unquestionably largely Presbyte- 
rian. Robinson distinctly affirmed that his 
church at Leyden, the mother-church of the 
Plymouth colony, was of the same govern- 
ment as the Protestant Church of France. 
Fourteen years before the landing of the 
Pilgrim Fathers in New England, Brewster 
was chosen an elder by the congregation ; and 
when, nearly two years after, he was eliosen 

* See The Tercentenary Book, Presbyterian Board of Publi- 
cation, Philadelphia. 



THE REVOLUTION. 21 

to be an assistant of Robinson, he declined 
to administer the sacraments expressly on the 
ground that the ruling elder's office which he 
held did not entitle him to do that which he 
believed belonged to the minister or teaching 
elder. 

" With this office and with these views, 
Brewster came to this country with the 
Plymouth colony, and thus he helped to 
form the Plymouth Church. Thenceforward 
for a long period, acting on this principle, 
the early churches of Salem, Charlestown, 
Boston and elsewhere in New England had 
ruling elders, while in 1646 and 1680 re- 
spectively all the ministers and an elder 
from each church met in synod at Cam- 
bridge, and by distinct act recognized the 
Presbyterian form of church government. 
They went so far as to adopt the Confession 
of Faith of the Westminster Assembly of 
Divines." 

It is therefore abundantly evident that in 
the splendid patriotism of New England in 



22 PRESBYTERIANS AND* THE REVOLUTION. 

tlie Kevoliition, Presbyterianism had a far 
from insignificant share. 

As, then, from our Centennial heights we 
take a view of the teeming affluence of re- 
suhs that have issued from our Revokitionary 
struggle — results of material prosperity, of 
civil and religious freedom, happy severance 
of Church and State, of evangelical piety and 
missionary zeal — and with ample and thank- 
ful acknowledgments of all that is due to 
others — it is a privilege of Presbyterians 
w^hich no one will question, to remind 
themselves and others of the services ren- 
dered by Presbyterianism in that momentous 
struggle. 



CHAPTER II. 

PRESBYTERIANISM A REPRESENTATIVE RE- 
PUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT. 

DEESBYTERIANISM, strictly speaking, 
-*- is a system of church government, and 
is not necessarily allied to any one system 
of doctrine. History, however, shows it so 
steadily inclining toward and so generally 
associated with the system of doctrine com- 
monly styled Calvinistic as to suggest the 
existence of strong affinities between them. 

For as Mr. Barnes writes, "Calvinism and 
Presbyterianism spring essentially from the 
same idea — the idea of government, of regu- 
larity, of order ; the idea that God rules ; 
that government is desirable ; that things are 
and should be fixed and stable; that there 
is and should be law ; that the affairs of the 
universe at large, the affairs of society and 

23 



24 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

the affairs of individuals should be founded 
on settled principles, and should not be left 
to chance and haphazard. 

" Calvinism, though it seems to be, and 
though it is often represented as, a mere 
system of doctrine or of abstract dogmas 
having no philosophical foundation and no 
practical bearing, is, in fact, a system of 
government — a method and form in which 
the divine power is put forth in the adminis- 
tration of the affairs of the universe. It is 
based on the idea that God rules; that he 
has a plan ; that the plan is fixed and cer- 
taui ; that it does not depend on the fluctua- 
tions of the human will, on the caprice of 
the human heart, or on the contingencies 
and uncertainties of undetermined events in 
human affairs. It supposes that God is 
supreme; that he has authority; that he 
has a right to exercise dominion ; that for 
the good of the universe that right should 
be exercised, and that infinite power is put 
forth only in accordance with a plan.'' 



THE REVOLUTION. 25 

Presbyteriaiiism is the carrying out of 
ideas of order, authority and law as mani- 
fested in government and in docti'ine. And 
as a rule, Calvinism and Presbyterianism are 
found combined. 

That there is a natural and strong affinity 
between Presbyterian and republican forms 
of government is a truth that secular his- 
torians have recognized and fully acknow- 
ledged. 

" Calvinism," writes Mr. Bancroft, " is 
gradual republicanism. 

" In Geneva, a republic on the confines of 
France, Italy and Germany, Calvin, appeal- 
ing to the people for support, continued the 
career of enfranchisement by planting the 
institutions which nursed the minds of Rous- 
seau, Necker and De Stael." 

" It was to Geneva," writes Mr. A^illers 
(quoted by Smythe), " that all the proscribed 
exiles who were driven from Eno;land bv the 
intolerance of Mary came to get intoxicated 
with republicanism, and from this focus they 



26 PRESS YTEE&NS AND 

brought back with them those principles 
of repuhlicanism which annoyed Elizabeth, 
perplexed and resisted James and brought 
Charles to the deserved death of a traitor." 

"The remains of the school of Melville," 
writes Dr. Ay ton, " led on by Mr. William 
Scott and Mr. John Carmichael, were favor- 
able to a republic^ 

" Did a proud aristocracy," writes Mr. 
Bancroft, "trace its lineage through a high- 
born ancestry, the Republican Reformer with 
a loftier pride invaded the invisible world, 
and from the book of life brought down the 
record of the noblest enfranchisement decreed 
from all eternity by the King of kings." 

"Calvin," writes Bishop Horsley, "was 
unquestionably in theory a republican. So 
wedded was he to this notion that he endeav- 
ored to fashion the government of all the 
Protestant churches upon republican princi- 
ples." 

"The school of Knox," writes Hallam, 
"was full of men breathing their Master's 



THE REVOLUTION, 27 

spirit. Their system of local and general 
assemblies infused, together with the forms 
of a republic, its energy and impatience of 
external control, combined with the concen- 
tration and unity of purpose that belong to 
the most vigorous government. 

" Not merely in their representative as- 
semblies, but in their pulpits, they perpet- 
ually remonstrated in no guarded language 
against the misgovernment of the court and 
even the personal indiscretions of the king." 

To such an extreme did they carry their 
views of freedom that Andrew Melville, 
when summoned before the court to answer 
some so-called seditious utterances in the 
pulpit, declined to acknowledge its jurisdic- 
tion on the ground that he was responsible 
first to his presbytery. 

Of the Scottish preachers Lord Macaulay 
writes : " They inherited the republican opin- 
ions of Knox." 

Isaac Taylor calls republicanism the Pres- 
byterian pri7iciple. 



28 PRESBYTEltlANS AND 

The late able and distinguislied Roman 
Catholic, Arclibisliop Hughes of New York, 
wrote : 

" Though it is my privilege to regard the 
authority exercised by the General Assembly 
as usurpation, still I must say, with every 
man acquainted with the mode in which it is 
organized, that for the purposes of popular 
and political government its structure is little 
inferior to that of Congress itself. It acts 
on the principle of a radiating centre, and is 
without an equal or a rival among the other 
denominations of the country." 

Very welcome testimony is this, from a 
very unexjDCcted quarter. 

The fundamental principles of Presbyteri- 
anism embrace the following points : 

1. The body of the people arc, under God, 
the source and fountain of all the powers 
exercised in the government of the Church. 

2. Only by the voice of the people can 
any incumbent find his Avay into official 
position. 



TJIE REVOLUTION. 29 

3. In connection with the pastor, who has 
been elected by the people, certain people, 
elected for this j^wi'pose by their brethren, 
shall exercise the functions of rulers over the 
church and congregation. 

4. The government of the Church is to be 
administered in accordance with a constitu- 
tion embracing principles derived from the 
word of God and agreed upon by the people, 
through those whom they have chosen to 
represent them. 

5. All ministers hold perfect equality of 
rank among themselves, and as rulers all 
preachers and ruling elders have equal au- 
thority in the governing assemblies of the 
Church. 

6. The voice of the majority is the voice 
of the whole. This principle applies equally 
to any congregation in the choice of officers, 
and to any one of the local governing as- 
semblies, and also to the whole aggregate 
Church. 

"The radical principles of Presbyterian 



30 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

church government are that a larger part 
of the Church, or a representation of it, 
should govern a smaller ; that in like man- 
ner a representation of the whole should 
govern and determine in regard to e very- 
part, and to all the parts united — that is, a 
majority shall govern J^ 

That this system is in close accord with 
that of the primitive Church ecclesiastical 
history testifies. 

" Each individual church," writes Mos- 
heim, "assumed to itself the rights of a little 
distinct rejjuhlic or commomvealth. 

"At length the churches of a province be- 
came associated much after the manner of 
confederate republics, so that the Christian 
community may be said thenceforward to 
have resembled one large commonweal, made 
up, like those of Holland and Switzerland, 
of many minor republics." 

Speaking of the Presbyterian system, 
Alexander Henderson writes : 

" Here is superiority without tyranny; for 



THE REVOLUTION. 31 

no minister has a papal or monarchical juris- 
diction over his own flock, far less over other 
pastors and over all the congregations. Here 
is parity without confusion and disorder; for 
the pastors are in order before elders. Every 
particular church is subordinate to a presby- 
tery, the presbytery to the synod, and the 
synod to the national assembly. Here is 
subjection without slavery ; for the people 
are subject to the pastors and assemblies; 
yet there is no assembly wherein every par- 
ticular church hath not interest and power." 

Those who are familiar with the forms of 
the Greek, Roman and former French re- 
publics are aware of one marked distinction 
between them and our own, in the matter of 
organization. The former were exceedingly 
loose-jointed, while ours is as one body, "fitly 
joined together and compacted by that which 
every joint supplieth," legislative, executive, 
judicial, all distinct, yet working together as 
component parts of well-adjusted machinery. 

In the commonwealth we find township, 



32 presbyteMaxs axd 

county and State government compacted 
into a happy system of order, superiority 
and subordination; in the judiciary, court 
above court, from lowest to supreme ; and 
above all, the national Congress and gov- 
ernment. 

So in our Church we have, first, the indi- 
vidual session, composed of men elected by 
the people — each church a little republic. 
Above the session is the j)resbytery, super- 
vising all the church sessions, and composed 
of ministers and a lay representation from 
the several churches, equal and often superior 
in number to the ministers — another and 
larger republic. Next above is the synod, 
which is only a larger presbytery — another 
republic. And above all is the general 
assembly, whicli is the general presbytery, 
ou: ecclesiastical congress, our whole Church 
in general assembly convened. 

The records of every session are annually 
reviewed and commended or censured by 
the presbytery to which it belongs. In 



THE REVOLUTION. 33 

like manner, the records of each presbytery- 
are reviewed by the synod, and the records 
of each synod by the general assembly. A 
member of any one of our churches tried 
and censured by the session may appeal to 
the presbytery, and thence, if he will, to the 
synod, and thence to the general assembly. 
Thus the youngest and humblest member 
of the Presbyterian Church enjoys the in- 
alienable privilege of having his case finally 
adjudicated by the whole Church, 

It is obvious, therefore, that our church 
government is in singular harmony with the 
spirit and form of government in both the 
State and nation. 



CHAPTER III. 
PRESBYTERIANISM ODIOUS TO TYRANTS. 

"pKOTESTANTISM," writes Carlyle, " was 
a revolt against spiritual sovereignties, 
popes and much else. Presbyterians carried 
out the revolt against earthly sovereignties.''^ 

Queen Elizabeth detested " presbytery " 
because it held princij)les inconsistent with 
allegiance to her crown. 

" She knew that the church of Geneva, 
which the Puritans declared to be their 
model, was not only essentially rej)ublican, 
but could not be perfectly established except 
in a republic." 

"The Presbyterian clergy,'' whites Mr. 
Hallam, " individually and collectively dis- 
played the intrepid and haughty spirit of 
the English Puritans. Though Elizabeth 
had, from policy, abetted the Scottish clergy 

34 



TEE REVOLUTION. 35 

in their attacks upon the civil administration, 
this connection itself had probably given her 
such an insight into their temper as well as 
their influence that she must have shuddered 
at the thought of seeing a repuhlican assembly 
substituted for her faithful satraps, her bish- 
ops, so ready to do her bidding." 

King James detested "presbytery." In 
Scotland, indeed, he had professed himself 
an enthusiastic Presbyterian. In the general 
assembly, with uplifted Lands, in a rapture 
of enthusiasm, he exclaimed : 

" I bless God that I was born in such a 
time as in the light of the gospel, and in such 
a place as to be king in such a Kirk, the sin- 
cerest Kirk in all the world. 

" I charge you, my good people — minis- 
ters, elders, nobles, gentlemen and barons — 
to stand to your purity, and I, forsooth, as 
long as I brook my life and crown, will main- 
tain the same against all deadly." 

But when, having become king of England 
as well as of Scotland, he had crossed the 



36 PBESBYTEMANS AND 

border, "he found," to quote the words of 
Hallam, " a very different race of churchmen, 
well tramed in the supple school of courtly 
conformity, and emulous ^.atterers of both 
hxs j)ower and his wiscl':m." 

In this state of things the king soon began 
to waver. His despotic instincts taught him 
where his interests lay. And while in this 
transition state it is said that one of his 
stuiiy old chaplains, who feared God too 
well to be overmuch afraid of kings, treated 
His Majesty one Sabbath morning to a ser- 
mon on a text after his own name, James 
first, sixth (James was the first of England 
and the sixth of Scotland) : " He that w^aver- 
eth is like a wave of the sea driven with the 
wind and tossed." 

But the sermon did not save the king. 
On the second day of the Hampton Court 
Conference, while the learned and excellent 
Dr. Reynolds was speaking, Bancroft, bishop 
of London, fell on his knees and begged the 
king to stop the schismatic's mouth. As 



THE REVOLUTIOK 37 

Keynolcls proceeded King James broke In, 
exclaiming in his profane way : 

" You are aiming at a Scots' presbytery, 
which agreeth as' v^ell with monai'chy as God 
and the devil. TheK Jack and Tom and 
Will and Dick shall meet, and at their pie i- 
sure censure me and my council. Then Wdl 
shall stand up and say, It must be thus. 
Then Dick shall reply and say. Nay, nin^ry, 
but we will have it thus; and therefore I 
say, The king shall decide." 

Then turning to the sycophants that fawned 
on him, he added : " I will make them con- 
form or I will harry them out of the land, 
or else worse — only hang them, that's all." 

On the third day the king advocated the 
high commission, inquisitorial oaths, and 
Whitgift, archbishop of Canterbury, ex- 
claimed : 

" Your Majesty speaks by the esj^ecial as- 
sistance of God's Spirit." 

And Bancroft, bishop of London, fell on 
his knees and said : 



38 presbyteP.ians and 

" My heart melteth for joy because God 
liath given England such a king as since 
Christ's time hath not been." 

Charles I., a thorough despot, hated pres- 
bytery. 

The thought is brought out by Bancroft 
where, incidentally, he speaks of " The po- 
litical character of Calvinism, which with 
one consent and with instinctive judgment 
the monarchs of that day feared as republi- 
canis7n, and which Charles I. declared a re- 
ligion unfit for a gentleman," etc. 

" Show me," said Charles, " any 2:>recedent 
where presbyterial government and regal 
were together without perpetual rebellions. 
And it cannot be otherwise, for the ground 
of their doctrine is anti-monarchical." 

The king had a congenial instructor in his 
chaplain, Peter Heylin, D. D., who wrote a 
work under this title: "Aerius Redivivus ; 
or, The History of the Presbyterians, contain- 
ing the Beginning, Progresse and Successes 
of that Active Sect, their Oppositions to Mo- 



THE REVOLUTION. 39 

narchical Governments," etc. The volume 
ends as follows : 

" Thus we have seen the dangerous doc- 
trines and positions, the secret plots and 
open practices, the sacrileges, spoils and ra- 
pines, the tumults, murders and seditions, 
the horrid treasons and rebellions, which 
have been raised by the Presbyterians in 
most parts of Christendom for one hundred 
years and upward," etc., etc. 

Dean Swift, speaking of those who took 
refuge in Geneva from persecution in Eng- 
land, says : 

"When they returned, they were grown 
so fond of the government and religion of 
the place that they used all possible en- 
deavors to introduce both into our country. 
From hence they proceeded to quarrel with 
the kingly government because the city of 
Geneva, to which their fathers had flown for 
refuge, was a commonwealth or government 
of the people." 

The poet Dryden, a double apostate — an 



40 PRESBYTERIANS ANIi THE REVOLUTION. 

apostate from Cromwellian republicanism to 
the despotism of Charles II., and then from 
Puritanism to Romanism — wrote, as well he 
might: 

" Quickened with fire below, your monsters breed 
In fenny Holland and in fruitful Tweed ; 
And, like, the ^rsf, the last aifects to be 
Drawn from the dregs of a democracy. 

" But as the poisons of the deadliest kind 
Are to their own unhappy coasts confined, 
So presbytery, in its pestilential zeal, 
Can flourish only in a commonweal' 



CHAPTER ly. 

PRESBYTERIAN SPIRIT IN HARMONY WITH 
THAT OF THE REVOLUTION. 

4 EEASONABLY thorough discussion 
"^ of this theme woukl take us across 
the ocean and back through past centuries, 
since our earlier forefathers and many of 
the noblest of our Revolutionary champions 
came to us from other lands, and the prin- 
ciples that formed the life of the American 
struggle emerged to view and embodied 
themselves in action on many a foreign 
shore. 

" A young French refugee," writes Mr. 
Bancroft, " skilled alike in theology and 
civil law, entering the republic of Geneva, 
and conforming its ecclesiastical discipline 
to the princijjles of reinihlicaii simplicity, 
established a party of which Englishmen 

41 



42 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

became members and New England the 
asylum. 

"Calvinism was revolutionary. By tlie 
side of the eternal mountains, the perennial 
snows and arrowy rivers of Switzerland, it 
established a government without a king. 
It was powerful in France. It entered 
Holland, inspiring an industrious nation 
with heroic enthusiasm. It penetrated 
Scotland, and nerved its rugged but hearty 
envoy to resist the flatterers of Queen Mary. 
It infused itself into England, and placed 
its plebeian sympathies in strong resistance 
to the courtly hierarchy. Inviting every 
man to read the Bible, and teaching as a 
divine revelation the natural equality of 
man, it claimed freedom of utterance. 

" It inspired its converts to cross the At- 
lantic and sail away from the traditions of 
the Church, from hereditary power, from the 
sovereignty of earthly kings, and from all 
dominion but that of the Bible and such as 
arose from natural reason and equity." 



THE REVOLUTION. 43 

In 1571 the French General Assembly 
met at Rochelle, with Theodore Beza as 
moderator. There were present at that As- 
sembly the queen of Navarre, Henry, the 
Bourbon prince of Conde, Prince Louis, 
count of Nassau, Admiral Coligny and 
other lords and gentlemen. That General 
Assembly represented and ruled over twen- 
ty-one hundred and fifty churches. In some 
of these churches there were ten thousand 
members. 

Then came the massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew, followed by the revocation of the Edict 
of Nantes, and this by every species of per- 
secution and torture of which the Romish 
brain has been ever so fertile — plunder of 
property, burning of religious books, tearing 
of children from their parents, dragging of 
ministers to torture, breaking them on the 
wheel, killing them and throwing their 
bleeding corpses to dogs ; some were roasted 
by slow fires, some were gashed with knives 
and some torn with red-hot pincers. 



44 presbyteP.ians a^b 

"No wonder tliese persecuted ones fled 
beyond the seas and songlit shelter in for- 
eign lands — five hundred thousand of them 
— some in England, some at the Cape of 
Good Hope and many in America. Of 
these last some went to New^ England and 
some to New York, but South Carolina 
became their chief resort — fugitives from 
Languedoc, Rochelle and Bordeaux and St. 
Quentin and the beautiful valley of Tours. 

" Their church was in Charleston ; and 
thither on every Lord's day, gathering from 
their plantations upon the banks of the 
Cooper, and taking advantage of the ebb 
and flow of the tide, they might be seen, 
parents with their children, whom no bigot 
could now wrest from them, making their way 
in light skiffs through the tranquil scene. 

" Other Huguenots established themselves 
on the banks of the San tee, in a region which 
has since been celebrated for affluence and 
refined hospitality. 

" The United States are full of monuments 



THE IIKVOLUTIOK. 45 

of the emi2:rations from France. The son of 
Judith Manigault entrusted the vast fortune 
he had acquired to the service of tlie coun- 
try that had ado2:)ted his mother. The hall 
in Boston where the eloquence of New Eng- 
land rocked the infant spirit of independence 
was the gift of the son of a Huguenot. On 
our frontier State the name of the oldest 
college bears witness to the w^ise liberality 
of the descendant of the Huguenots. 

" The children of the Calvinists of France 
have reason to resj^ect the memory of their 
ancestors." 

The Netherlands, from the earliest times, 
had shown the spirit of revolt against the 
sins and tyrannies of Kome, and hence be- 
came a land of refuge for the persecuted 
in other European countries. And in suc- 
cessive generations, Waldenses, Albigenses, 
Bohemian Brethren and others fought there 
the fight of faith and leavened the general 
mind with Calvinistic principles. There the 
Bible became the text-book of the people. 



46 PRESBYTEIifANS AND 

Forbidden to worship in the cliapels, tliey 
went forth on the Lord's day in vast pro- 
cessions into the fields ; women and children 
gathered in a circle around the pulpit, and 
around them the men with arms in their 
hands, where, on some occasions for four 
hours, they listened and prayed and sung. 
Sometimes their preacher came galloping to 
the field on a fleet-footed and spirited horse, 
fired a pistol and preached the word from 
the saddle. 

In 1562 the Netherlanders drew up a 
Confession of Faith. It was sent to Calvin 
for his approval, and then printed in Dutch 
and German. It confessedly expressed the 
views generally maintained by believers dis- 
persed throughout the Low Countries who 
desired to live according to the purity of the 
holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Dutch Presbyterian Calvinism contributed 
a noble band of heroes to the cause of Amer- 
ican freedom. 

The first settlement on Manhattan Island, in 



THE EEVOLUTION. 47 

1623, consisted of thirty families, chiefly of 
Protestant fugitives from the well-scourged 
Belgian j^rovinces. In want of a regular 
minister, two " consolers of the sick " held 
religious services among them. In 1628 a 
clergyman came, an elder was chosen and the 
Lord's Supper administered to fifty souls. 
Under the protection of the city of Amster- 
dam, a body of Waldenses emigrated to 
'New Netherlands. When the Huguenot 
churches at E-ochelle were razed, emigrants 
came in such numbers that public docu- 
ments were sometimes issued in French as 
well as in Dutch and English, and the 
memory of the old Rochelle perpetuated by 
a New Rochelle in the land of their refuge. 

Of Scotland, the land of Knox and the 
Melvilles, there is no need to speak. In 
their struggles with tyranny, the Scottish 
leaders were driven to probe to the bottom 
the grave questions of the rights of man 
and the prerogatives of princes; and in 
America their children, the heirs of their 



48 PRESBYTEitlAKS AND 

courage and principles, found a sphere for 
the practical application of those principles 
and the exercise of that courage. 

To the trumpet-call of the Revolution so 
universal and cordial was the response of 
Presbyterians that ardent devotees of King 
George, Lord North and Parliament could 
scarce see any one else in arms for the colo- 
nial cause but Presbyterians. 

"Mr. Galloway, a prominent advocate of 
the government," writes Dr. Charles Hodge, 
"ascribed the revolt and revolution mainly 
to the action of the Presbyterian clergy and 
laity as early as 1764, when the proposition 
for a general synod emanated from a com- 
mittee appointed for the purpose in Phila- 
delphia. This was a great exaggeration and 
mistake, but it indicates the close connection 
between the civil and religious part of the 
controversy." 

Another monarchist wrote : 

" You will have discovered that I am no 
friend of the Presbyterians, and that I fix 



THE REVOLUTION. 49 

all the blame of these extraordinary Ameri- 
can proceedings upon them. 

" Believe me, sir, the Presbyterians have 
been the chief and principal instruments in 
all these flaming measures ; and they always 
do and ever will act against government from 
that restless and turbulent anti-monarchical 
spirit which has always distinguished them 
everywhere when they had, or by any means 
could assume, power, however illegally." 

Indeed, so prominent and consj)icuous was 
the part taken by Presbyterians as individ- 
uals and as a Church in the Pevolutionary 
struggle that at the close of the war rumors 
were very rife that projects wxre on foot to 
make Presbyterianism the religion of the 
new republic. 

As we read in Gillett's history, ''The 
Presbyterian Church occupied indeed a 
highly respectable position. Its ministers 
had been chaplains in the army. Its lead- 
ing man, Dr. Witherspoon, had been a leader 
in the General Congress. It was, in fact, 



/ 



50 PBESBYTMBIANS AND 

the only denomination which, from position 
and influence, could be considered in the 
light of a candidate for the special favors of 
the State/' 

The suspicion that such state connection 
was aimed at by the Presbyterians was so 
strong in certain quarters that the synod in 
1783 put on her records a formal and em- 
phatic repudiation of any such purpose or 
desire. 

Colonel Barre having in an enthusiastic 
speech in parliament styled the Americans 
^^ Sons of Liberty^'' the colonists caught up 
the title, and all through the land formed 
associations of "Sons of Liberty," and the 
Sons of Liberty of New York went by the 
name of the ^^Presbyterian Juntos 

Let us quote again from Bancroft : 

" Just after the peace of Paris the ' Heart 
of Oak Protestants' came over in great num- 
bers and settled on the Catawba, in South 
Carolina. In Pennsylvania they peopled 
many counties. In Virginia they went up 



THE REVOLUTION. 51 

the valley of the Shenandoah and extended 
themselves into the upland region of North 
Carolina. Their training in Ireland had 
kept the spirit of liberty as fresh in their 
hearts as if they had just been listening to the 
preaching of Knox or musing over the polit- 
ical creed of the Westminster Assembly ^ 

" We shall find that the first voice pub- 
licly raised in America to dissolve all con- 
nection with Great Britain came, not from 
the Puritans of New England, nor the Dutch 
of New York, nor the planters of Virginia, 
but from the Scotch- Irish Presbyterians.^^ 

" In 1683, just after the grant of East New 
Jersey, a proclamation unparalleled since 
Alva drove the Netherlands to independence 
put twenty thousand lives at the mercy of 
informers. After the insurrection of Mon- 
mouth, gibbets were erected in every village 
and soldiers entrusted with the execution of 
the laws ; scarce a Presbyterian family in 
Scotland but Avas involved in proscriptions 
and penalties.'' 



52 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

"Is it strange that Scotch Presbyterians 
of virtue, education and courage, blending a 
love of 23opular liberty with religious enthu- 
siasm, hurried to East New Jersey in such 
numbers as to give to the rising common- 
wealth a character which a century and a 
half has not effaced?" 

" In a few years a law of the common- 
wealth giving force to the common principle 
of the New England and the Scottish colo- 
nists established a system of free schools." 

" Hearts glowed more warmly on the 
banks of the Patapsco. Its convenient prox- 
imity to the border counties of Pennsylvania 
and Virginia had at length been observed by 
Scotch-Irkh Presbyterians and other bold 
and industrious men, and within a few years 
they had created the town of Baltimore." 

When, in May, 1774, the messages from 
the old committee of New York, Philadel- 
phia and Boston reached the inhabitants of 
the city and county of Baltimore, they, after 
consultation Avith the men of Annapolis, ad- 



THE REVOLUTION. 53 

vocated suspending commerce with Great 
Britain and the West Indies, chose deputies 
to a colonial convention, recommended a 
Continental Congress, and sent cheering 
words to their 'friends' at Boston as suffer- 
ers in the common cause. The supreme 
' Disposer of events,' they wrote, ' will termi- 
nate this severe trial of your patience in a 
happy confirmation of American fi-eedom.' 

" For this spirited conduct Baltimore was 
applauded as the model, and its example 
kindled new life in New York." — Bancroft. 

Bespecting the Stamp Act Mr. Bancroft 
writes : 

" Our mother should remember that we 
are not slaves, said the Presbyterians of 
Philadelphia." 

When news arrived of the passage through 
parliament of Townshend's bill taxing tea, 
glass, etc. — according to Bancroft — 

" Courage, Americans !" cried one of the 
famed "Triumvirate" of Presbyterian law- 
yers; "liberty, religion and science are on 



54 PEESBYTERIANS AND 

the wing to these shores. The finger of God 
points out a mighty empire to your sons. 
The savages of the wilderness were never 
expelled to make room for idolaters and 
slaves. The land we possess is the gift of 
Heaven to our fathers, and divine Providence 
seems to have decreed it to our latest j)os- 
terity.'' 

^' The day dawns when the foundations of 
this mighty empire are to be laid by the es- 
tablishmeiit of a regular American Constitu- 
tion, All that has hitherto been done seems 
to be little beside the collection of materials 
for this glorious fabric. The transfer of the 
European part of the family is so fast and 
our growth so swift that before seven 

YEARS ROLL OYER OUR HEADS the first stoue 

must be laid." 

Such were the sentiments of the "Presby- 
terian Triumvirate" so early as 1768. 

On the 20th of January, 1775, " the lords 
of the region" where the "Watauga and the 
Forks of Holston flow into the Tennessee, 



THE REVOLUTION. 55 

most of them Presbyterians of Scotch- Irish 
descent, met in council near Abington. 

"The news from Congress reached them 
slowly, but on receiving it the spirit of free- 
dom swept through their minds as naturally 
as the ceaseless forest wind sighs through the 
firs down the sides of the Black Mountains. 
They adhered unanimously to the association 
of Congress, and named a committee, with 
Charles Gummings, their minister, as its 
head. 

" We explored," said the committee, " our 
uncultivated wilderness, bordering on many 
nations of savages and surrounded by moun- 
tains almost inaccessible. But even to these 
remote regions the hand of power hath pur- 
sued us to strip us of that liberty and prop- 
erty with which God, nature and the rights 
of humanity have vested us. We are will- 
ing to contribute all in our power, if applied 
constitutionally, but we cannot think of sub- 
mitting our liberty or property to a venal 
British parliament or a corrupt ministry. 



56 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

" We are deliberately and resolutely de- 
termined never to surrender any of our in- 
estimable privileges to any power upon earth 
'but at the expense of our lives. These are 
our real though unpolished sentiments of 
liberty and loyalty, and in them we are re- 
solved to live and die." * 

The Hon. Gulian C. Verplanck of New 
York, in a public address, traced the origin 
of our Declaration of Independence to the 
National Covenant of Scotland. 

Mr. William B. Eeed of Philadelphia, 
himself an Episcopalian, wrote : "A Presby- 
terian royalist was a thing unheard of. The 
debt of gratitude which independent Amer- 
ica owes to the dissenting clergy and laity 
never can be paidJ' 

"The rigid Presbyterians," writes Mr. 
Bancroft, " proved in America the sup- 
porters of religious freedom. They were 
true to the spirit of the great English dis- 
senter who hated all laws that were formed 

* Bancroft. 



THE REVOLUTION. 57 

" To stretch the conscience, and to bind 
The native freedom of the mind." 

" In Virginia the Presbytery of Hanover 
took the lead for liberty, and demanded the 
abolition of the establishment of the Angli- 
can Church and the civil equality of every 
denomination." 



CHAPTER V. 
THE WESTMORELAND COUNTY RESOLUTIONS. 

TTOW thoroughly Presbyterian in origin 
^^ and character was the population scat- 
tered through Western Pennsylvania is 
known to all familiar with the early history 
of the State. At the time of the Ke volu- 
tion, Westmoreland county embraced nearly 
all the territory claimed by Pennsylvania 
west of the mountains. 

When the news of the opening of the war 
at Lexington and Concord reached the peo- 
ple of Westmoreland, they came together at 
Hanna's Town on the 16th of May, 1776, 
and passed the following resolutions : 

" Resolved, unanimously, That the parlia- 
ment of Great Britain by several late acts 
have declared the inhabitants of Massachu- 

58 



THE REVOLUTION. 59 

setts Bay to be in rebellion, and the ministry, 
by endeavoring to enforce those acts, have 
attempted to reduce the said inhabitants to 
a more wretched state of slavery than ever 
before existed in any state or country. Not 
content with violating their constitutional 
and chartered privileges, they would strip 
them of the rights of humanity, exposing 
lives to the wanton and unpunishable spirit 
of a licentious soldiery, and depriving them 
of the very means of subsistence. 

^'Resolved, unanimously, That there is no 
reason to doubt but the same system of 
tyranny and oppression will (should it meet 
with success in the Massachusetts Bay) be 
extended to every other part of America. It 
is therefore become the indispensable duty 
of every American, of every man who has 
any public virtue or love for his country, or 
any bowels for posterity, by every means 
which God has put in his power, to resist 
and oppose the execution of it ; that for us, 
we will be ready to oppose it with our lives 



60 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

and fortunes. And the better to enable us 
to accomplish it, we will immediately form 
ourselves into a military body to consist of 
companies to be made up out of the several 
townships under the following association, 
which is declared to be the Association of 
Westmoreland County. 

" Possessed with the most unshaken loyalty 
to His Majesty King George III., whom we 
acknowledge to be our lawful and rightful 
king, and who we wish may long be the be- 
loved sovereign of a free and happy people 
throughout the whole British empire, we de- 
clare to the world that we do not mean to 
deviate from the loyalty which we hold it 
to be our bounden duty to observe ; but 
animated by the love of liberty, it is no less 
our duty to maintain and defend our just 
rights (which with sorrow we have seen of 
late wantonly violated in many instances by 
a wicked ministry and a corrupt parliament) 
and transmit them entire to our posterity, for 



THE REVOLUTION. 61 

which purpose we do agree and associate 
ourselves together : 

^' First. To arm and form ourselves into a 
regiment or regiments, and choose officers to 
command us in such proportion as shall be 
thought necessary. 

''Second. We will, with alacrity, endeavor 
to make ourselves masters of the manual ex- 
ercise and such evolutions as may be neces- 
sary to enable us to act as a body with con- 
cert, and to that end we will meet at such 
times and places as shall be appointed, either 
for the companies or the regiments, by the 
officers commanding each when chosen. 

''Third. That should our country be in- 
vaded by a foreign enemy, or should troops 
be sent from Great Britain to enforce the 
late arbitrary acts of its parliament, we will 
cheerfully submit to military discipline, and 
to the utmost of our power resist and oppose 
them, or either of them, and we will coincide 
with any plan that may be formed for the 



62 PBESBYTSBIANS AND 

defence of America in general or Pennsyl- 
vania in particular. 

''Fourth, That we do not wish or desire 
any innovation, but only that things may 
be restored to and go on in the same way 
as before the era of the Stamp Act, when 
Boston grew great and America was happy. 
As a proof of this disposition, we will quietly 
submit to the laws by which we have been 
accustomed to be governed before that period, 
and will, in our several or associate capaci- 
ties, be ready when called on to assist the 
civil magistrate in carrying the same into 
execution. 

''Fifth. That when the British parlia- 
ment shall have repealed their late obnox- 
ious statutes, and shall have receded from 
their claim to tax us and make laws for 
us in every instance, or when some general 
plan of union and reconstruction has been 
formed and accepted by America, this our 
association shall be dissolved ; but till then 
it shall remain in full force, and to the ob- 



THE REVOLUTION. 63 

servation of it we bind ourselves by every- 
thing dear and sacred amongst men. No 
licensed murder! No famine introduced by 
law !" 

That the meeting was effective, and that 
the association speedily developed into com- 
panies and regiments, is gathered from a 
letter from Arthur St. Clair, who lived in 
the Ligonier Valley, twenty miles from Han- 
na's Town, and who, on the 25th of May, 
wrote at length to Governor Penn about the 
troublesome boundary question, and made 
mention of the patriotic movement in the 
following paragraph : 

" We have nothing but musters and com- 
mittees all over the country, and everything 
seems to be running into the greatest con- 
fusion. If some conciliating plan is not 
adopted by the Congress, America has seen 
her golden days ; they may return, but they 
will be preceded by scenes of horror. An 
association is formed in this county for the 
defence of American liberty. I got a clause 



64 PRESBYTERIANS J^D THE REVOLUTION. 

added by which they bind themselves to as- 
sist the civil magistrates in the execution of 
the laws they have been accustomed to be 
governed by." 

The Hanna's Town resolutions on a first 
reading scarcely seem to deserve the honor 
of a centennial celebration. There is a curi- 
ously mixed flavor of loyalty and rebellion 
in them, and they certainly do not constitute 
a declaration of independence, as has been 
claimed. When read in connection with the 
history of the times when they were adoj)ted, 
however, it will be found that they were sin- 
gularly bold and defiant. No public gather- 
ing held in the colonies during the year 1775 
went further in the direction of independence 
unless it was the Mecklenburg meeting. The 
farmers of Westmoreland really laid down 
an ultimatum to the British government, and 
pledged themselves to resist its authority by 
force of arms until their demands for the 
repeal of all oppressive measures Avere com- 
plied with. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE MECKLENBURG DECLARATION. 

r\F the population of Mecklenburg county 
and the adjacent regions Washington Ir- 
ving writes in his " Life of Washington :" 

" In this part of the State was a hardy- 
Presbyterian stock, the Scotch-Irish, as they 
were called, having emigrated from Scotland 
to Ireland and thence to America, and were 
said to possess the impulsiveness of the Irish- 
man with the dogged resolution of the Cove- 
nanter. The early history of the colonies 
abounds with instances of this spirit among 
the people. ^They always behaved inso- 
lently to their governors,' complained Gov- 
ernor Barrington in 1731 ; ' some they have 
driven out of the country, at other times they 
set up a government of their own choice sup- 
ported by men under arms.' " 

5 65 



QQ PRESBYTEniANS AND 

The following is Mr. Bancroft's account of 
the "Mecklenburg Declaration," as given in 
the seventh volume of his '^ History of the 
United States," beginning at page 370 : 

" The people of the county of Mecklenburg 
had carefully observed the progress of the 
controversy with Britain, and during the 
winter political meetings had repeatedly been 
held in Charlotte. That town had been 
chosen for the seat of the Presbyterian col- 
lege which the legislature of North Carolina 
had chartered, but which the king had dis- 
allowed ; and it was the centre of the culture 
of that part of the province. The number 
of houses in the village was not more than 
twenty, but the district was already well set- 
tled by herdsmen, who lived apart on their 
farms. 

" Some time in May, 1775, they received 
the news of the address which in the preced- 
ing February had been presented to the king 
by both houses of parliament, and which de- 
clared the American colonies to be in a state 



THE BE VOLUTION. 67 

of actual rebellion. This was to them the 
evidence that tlie crisis in American affairs 
was come, and the 2)eo2:>le proposed among 
themselves to abrogate all dependence on 
the royal authority. But the militia compa- 
nies were sworn to allegiance ; and ' how/ it 
was objected, ' can we be absolved from our 
oath ?' ' The oath/ it was answered, ^ binds 
only while the king protects.' At the in- 
stance of Thomas Polk, the commander of 
the militia of tlie county, two delegates from 
each company were called together in Char- 
lotte as a representative committee. Before 
their consultations had ended, the message of 
the innocent blood shed at Lexington came 
up from Charleston and inflamed their zeal. 
They were impatient that their remoteness 
forbade their direct activity ; had it been 
possible, they would have sent a hundred 
bullocks from their fields to the poor of 
Boston. No minutes of the committee are 
known to exist, but the result of their delib- 
erations, framed with joeculiar skill, precision 



68 PRESBYTEklANS AND 

of language and calm comprehensiveness, re- 
mains as the monument of their wisdom and 
courage. Of the delegates to that mem- 
orable assembly the name of Ephraim Bre- 
vard should be remembered with honor by 
his countrymen. He was one of a numerous 
family of patriot brothers, and himself in 
the end fell a martyr to the j)ublic cause. 
Trained in the college at Princeton, ripened 
among the brave Presbyterians of Middle 
Carolina, he digested the system which was 
then adopted, and which formed in effect a 
declaration of independence as well as a 
complete system of government. ^All laws 
and commissions confirmed by or derived 
from the authority of the king or parlia- 
ment,' such are the bold but well-considered 
words of these daring statesmen, 'are an- 
nulled and vacated; all commissions, civil 
and military, heretofore granted by the 
Crown to be exercised in the colonies, are 
void; the provincial Congress of each prov- 
ince, under the direction of the great Conti- 



THE REVOLUTION. 69 

neiital Congress, is invested with all legislative 
and executive powers within the respective 
provinces, and no other legislative or execu- 
tive power does or can exist at this time in 
any part of these colonies. As all former 
laws are now suspended in this province and 
the Congress has not yet provided others, we 
judge it necessary for the better preserva- 
tion of good order to form certain rules and 
regulations for the internal government of 
this county until laws shall be provided for 
us by the Congress.' 

" In accordance wath these principles, the 
freemen of the county formed themselves 
into nine military companies and elected 
their own officers. Judicial powers were 
conferred on men to be singled out by the 
vote of the companies, two from each of 
them, the whole number of eighteen consti- 
tuting a court of appeal. The tenure alike 
of military and civil officers was ' the plea- 
sure of their several constituents.' All pub- 
lic and county taxes, all quit-rents to the 



70 FEESBYTEMANS AND 

Crown were sequestered, and it was voted 
that persons receiving new commissions from 
the king or exercising old ones should be 
dealt with as enemies of the country. 

" The resolves were made binding on all, 
and were to be enforced till the provincial 
Congress should provide otherwise, or, wdiat 
they knew w^ould never take place, till the 
British j^arliament should resign its arbitrary 
pretensions with respect to America. At 
the same time, the militia companies were 
directed to provide themselves with arms, 
and Thomas Polk and Joseph Kenedy were 
specially appointed to purchase powder, lead 
and flints. 

'^ Before the month of May had come to 
an end the resolutions were signed by 
Ephraim Brevard as clerk of the committee, 
and were adopted by the people with the de- 
termined enthusiasm which springs from the 
combined influence of the love of liberty and 
of religion. Thus was Mecklenburg county, 
in North Carolina, separated from the Brit- 



THE REVOLUTION. 71 

ish empire. The resolves were transmitted 
witli all haste to be printed in Charleston, 
and as they spread through the South they 
startled the royal governors of Georgia and 
North Carolina. They were despatched by 
a messenger to the Continental Congress that 
the world might know their authors had re- 
nounced their allegiance to the king of Great 
Britain, and had constituted a government 
for themselves. 

" The messenger stopped on his way at 
Salisbury, and there, to a crowd round the 
court-house, the resolves were read and ap- 
proved. The western counties were the most 
populous part of North Carolina, and the 
royal governor had flattered himself and the 
king with the fullest assurance of their sup- 
port. ^ I have no doubt,' said he, ' that I 
might command their best services at a word 
on an emergency. I consider I have the 
means in my own hands to maintain the sov- 
ereignty of this country to my royal master 
in all events.' And now he was obliged to 



72 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

transmit tlie deliberate, consistent and well- 
considered resolutions of Mecklenburg, which 
he described as the boldest of all, * most trait- 
orously declaring the entire dissolution of 
the laws and constitution and setting up a 
system of rule and regulation subversive of 
His Majesty's government.' " 

The full text of the Mecklenburg Declara- 
tion is as follows : 

" 1. Resolved, That whosoever, directly or 
indirectly, abetted, or in any way, form or 
manner countenanced, the unchartered and 
dangerous invasion of our rights, as claimed 
by Great Britain, is an enemy to this coun- 
try, to America, and to the inherent and in- 
alienable rights of man. 

"2. Resolved, That we, the citizens of 
Mecklenburg county, do hereby dissolve the 
political bonds which have connected us to 
the mother country, and hereby absolve our- 
selves from all allegiance to the British 
Crown, and abjure all political connection, 
contract or association with that nation, who 



THE REVOLUTION. 73 

have wantonly trampled on our riglits and 
liberties and inhumanly shed the blood of 
American patriots at Lexington. 

" 3. Resolved, That we do hereby declare 
ourselves a free and independent people; are, 
and of right ought to be, a sovereign and 
self-governing association, under the control 
of no power other than that of our God and 
the general government of the Congress ; to 
the maintenance of which we solemnly pledge 
to each other our mutual co-operation and 
our lives, our fortunes and our most sacred 
honor. 

"4. Resolved,T\\2ii as we now acknowledge 
the existence and control of no law or legal 
officer, civil or military, within this county, 
we do hereby ordain and adopt as a rule of 
life, all, each and every of our former laws, 
wherein, nevertheless, the Crown of Great 
Britain never can be considered as holding 
rights, privileges, immunities or authorities 
therein. 

"5. Resolved, That it is further desired that 



74 PRESBYTEBfANS AND 

all, each and every military officer in this 
county is hereby reinstated in his former 
command and authority, he acting conform- 
ably to these regulations. And that every 
member present of this delegation shall 
henceforth be a civil officer, namely : A 
justice of the peace in the character of a 
* committeeman,' to issue process, hear and 
determine all matters of controversy accord- 
ing to the said adopted laws, and to preserve 
peace, union and harmony in said county, 
and to use every exertion to spread the love 
of country and fire of freedom throughout 
America, until a more general and organ- 
ized government be established in this prov- 
ince." 

On December 7, 1819, Captain James Jack 
certified that he was appointed to carry the 
declaration to Congress; that he stopped at 
Salisbury, where Colonel Kennon, an at- 
torney, read the resolutions in open court ; 
that he only heard of one person, a Mr. 
Beard, who opposed them ; and that he went 



THE REVOLUTION. 75 

on to Philadelphia and delivered the decla- 
ration. 

The royal governor of the province, on the 
30th of June, 1775, wrote as follows to the 
colonial secretary of Great Britain : 

" The resolves of the committee of Meck- 
lenburg, which your lordship will find in the 
enclosed newspaper, surpass all the horrid 
and treasonable publications the inflamma- 
tory spirits of this continent have yet pro- 
duced; and your lordship may depend its 
authors and abettors will not escape my 
notice whenever my hands are sufficiently 
strengthened to attempt the recovery of the 
lost authority of the government. 

"A copy of these resolves, I am informed, 
was sent off to the Congress at Philadelphia 
as soon as they were passed in the committee.'' 

Then, on the 8th of August, 1775, he 
issued a proclamation in which he said : 

" Whereas I have seen a most infamous 
publication in the * Cape Fear Mercury,' im- 
porting to be the resolves of a set of people 



76 presbyteriJlns and 

styling themselves a Committee of the County 
of Mecklenburg, most traitorously declaring 
the entire dissolution of laws, government and 
constitution of this country, and setting up a 
system of rule and regulation repugnant to 
the laws and subversive of His Majesty's 
government." 

The coincidence of language and phrase 
between the Mecklenburg and national 
declarations will surprise no one familiar 
with the political writings and speeches of 
those times, where such phrases constantly 
recur. 

The silence of Congress respecting this 
declaration, and the fact that both Jefferson 
and John Adams knew nothing of it, are 
easily explained. The messenger who con- 
veyed to Philadel23hia the report of the 
Mecklenburg proceedings delivered that re- 
port to the North Carolina delegates. It 
was the business of these delegates to pre- 
sent this to Congress. But as Congress at 
this time shrank from the thought of in- 



THE REVOLUTION. 11 

dependence, and three months after this 
unanimously and in the humblest terms 
petitioned King George for redress of 
grievances, what more likely than that the 
Carolina delegates looked upon the Meck- 
lenburg movement as a hasty act of a few 
enthusiasts, and refrained from so much as 
mentioning the matter in Congress ? 

As late as August, 1775, Mr. Jefferson 
said : " I would rather be in dependence 
on Great Britain, properly limited, than on 
any nation on earth, or than on no nation^ 

Washington said in May, 1776, "When 
I took command of this army (June, 1775), 
I abhorred the idea of independence.^' 

As to John Adams, so far as we can 
learn from Bancroft, his first public word 
in favor of independence was long subse- 
quent to May, 1775. 

Whatever, then, is uncertain, this is un- 
questionable, that the Presbyterians of Meck- 
lenburg in May, 1775, far in advance of 
Congress and in advance of the rest of the 



78 PRESBYTERIANS AND THE REVOLUTION. 

• 

country, passed resolutions which the royal 
governor Martin, in June of that year, could 
very justly stigmatize as " treasonable," and 
in August following could proclaim as " de- 
claring the dissolution of the laws, govern- 
ment and constitution of the country, and 
the setting up of a system of rule and reg- 
ulation repugnant to the laws and subver- 
sive of His Majesty's government." 

Mr. Bancroft is more than justified in his 
declaration that ^'the first voice publicly 
raised in America to dissolve all connection 
with Great Britain came, not from the Puri- 
tans of New England, nor the Dutch of New 
York, nor the planters of Virginia, hut from 
the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians J^ 



CHAPTER yil. 
PRESBYTERIAN ZEAL AND SUFFERING. 

rPHE zeal of Presbyterians during the war 
exposed them to s|)ecial cruelties at the 
hands of the British soldiery. Among the 
foremost patriots of that day was the Rev. 
James Caldwell, pastor of the Presbyterian 
church of Elizabeth town, N. J. 

" Descended from the Huguenots," writes 
the Rev. Dr. Sprague in his "Annals," "and 
imbibing the spirit of the Scotch Covenant- 
ers, he may be said to have inherited a feel- 
ing of opposition to tyrants. Connected with 
his congregation were the Daytons, the Og- 
dens, Francis Barber, William Crane, Oliver 
Spencer, Elias Boudinot, William Living- 
ston, Abram Clark, and others who became 
eminent for their wisdom, piety, valor and 
patriotism." 

79 



80 PRESBYTEmANS AND 

"When the news of the passage of the Dec- 
laration of Independence reached the New 
Jersey brigade, of which he w^as chaplain, 
the men were called together, and Parson 
Caldwell gave this toast : " Harmony, honor 
and all prosperity to the free and independ- 
ent United States of America; wise legisla- 
tors, brave and victorious armies, both by sea 
and land, to the United States of America.'' 
His church was given up to be used as a 
hospital for the sick. Its bell sounded the 
alarm on the approach of the foe. 

In an attack upon Springfield, when the 
wadding of the patriots gave out, Caldwell 
ran to the Presbyterian church ; and return- 
ing with his arms and pockets filled with 
"Watts' Psalms and Hymns," he scattered 
them among the soldiers, exclaiming, " Now, 
boys, give them Watts !" 

In vexation at his patriotism, British of- 
ficers offered large rew^ards for his ca23ture. 
Failing in this, the British soldiery set fire to 
his church and shot his wife through the win- 



THE REVOLUTION. 81 

dow of her own room in the midst of her 
nine children, dragged her bleeding corpse 
into the street and laid the house and other 
surrounding buildings in ashes. The follow- 
ing poem by Bret Harte tells the story : 

" Here's the spot. Look around you. Above on the height 
Lny the Hessians encamped. By that church on the right 
Stood the gaunt Jersey farmers. And here ran a wall. 
You may dig anywhere, and you'll turn up a ball. 
Nothing more. Grasses spring, waters run, flowers blow 
Pretty much as they did ninety-three years ago. 

" Nothing more did I say ? Stay one moment ; you've heard 
Of Caldwell, the parson, who once preached the word 
Down at Springfield ? What, no ? Come, that's bad ! Why, 

he had 
All the Jerseys aflame. And they gave him the name 
Of the ' rebel high priest,' He stuck in their gorge, 
For he loved the Lord God, and he hated King George. 

" He had cause, you may say. When the Hessians that day 
Marched up with Knyphausen, they stopped on the way 
At the ' Farms,' where his wife, with a child in her arms, 
vSat alone in the house. How it happened none knew 
But God and that one of the hireling crew 
Who fired the shot. Enough ! there she lay, 
And Caldwell the chaplain, her husband, away. 

*' Did he preach? did lie pray? Think of him as you stand 
By the old church to-dav ; think of him and that band 



82 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

Of militant plougliboys. See the smoke and the lieat 
Of that reckless advance, of that straggling retreat ! 
Keep the ghost of that wife, foully slain, in your view, 
And what could you, what should you, what would you do ? 

" Why, just what he did. They were left in the lurch 
For the want of more wadding. He ran to the church, 
Broke the door, stripped the pews, and dashed out in the 

road 
With his arras full of hymn-books, and threw down his load 
At their feet. Then above all the shouting and shots 
Rang his voice: * Put Watts into 'era ! boys, give 'em Watts !' 

"And they did. That is all. Grasses spring, flowers blow 
Pretty much as they did ninety-three years ago. 
You may dig anywhere, and you'll turn up a ball, 
But not always a hero like this; and that's all." 

Dr. Thomas Smyth writes : '' The battles 
of the Cowpens, of King's Mountain, and 
also the severe skirmish known as Hiick's 
Defeat, are celebrated as giving a turning- 
point to the contests of the Revolution. Gen- 
eral Morgan, who commanded at the Cow- 
pens, Avas a Presbyterian elder. General 
Pickens, who made all the arrangements for 
the battle, was a Presbyterian elder, and 
nearly all under their command were Pres- 



THE REVOLUTION. 83 

byterians. In the battle of King's Mountain 
Colonel Campbell, Colonel James Williams, 
Colonel Cleaveland, Colonel Shelby and Col- 
onel Sevier were all Presbyterian elders, and 
the body of their troops were from Presby- 
terian settlements. At Hack's Defeat, in 
York, Colonel Bratton and Major Dickson 
were both elders in the Presbyterian Church. 
Major Samuel Morrow, who was with Colonel 
Sumpter in four engagements and took part 
in many other engagements, was for about 
fifty years a ruling elder in the Presbyterian 
Church. 

" It may also be mentioned that Marion, 
Huger and other distinguished men of 
Kevolutionary memory were of Huguenot 
— that is, of full-blooded Presbyterian — de- 
scent." 

On this point we find the following in the 
lamented Gillett's " History of the Presbyte- 
rian Church in the United States:" 

" In initiating the Revolution and in sus- 
taining the patriotic resistance of their coun- 



84 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

trymen to illegal tyranny, tlie ministers of 
tlie Presbyterian Church bore a conspicuous, 
and even foremost, part. Throughout that 
most trying and disastrous period through 
which the Church and country had as yet 
been called to pass they proved themselves 
alike faithful to both. 

"They preached the duty of resisting 
tyrants. They cheered their people in the 
dreary period of conflict by inspiring lofty 
trust in the God of nations. 

"Among those who advocated the cause 
of the colonists and strengthened the patri- 
otic zeal by Christian principle were Dr. 
Witherspoon, Patrick Alison in Baltimore, 
William Tennent in Charlestown, George 
Duffield in Philadelphia, John Miller at 
Dover, James Waddell and John Blair 
Smith in Virginia. 

" John Carmichael preached at their re- 
quest to the militia of Lancaster. The dis- 
course of Miller of Dover, who was bold in 
the expression of his patriotic ardor, was 



THE REVOLUTION. 85 

especially remarkable. Several days before 
the Declaration of Independence he so far 
anticipated the spirit of that decisive mea- 
sure as to address his j)eo]3le from that sig- 
nificant text, ' We have no part in David, 
nor anv inheritance in the son of Jesse : to 
your .tents, O Israel !' 

" Robert Davidson, pastor of the First 
Presbyterian church of Philadelphia at the 
commencement of the war, preached before 
several military companies from the text, 
* For there fell down many slain because 
the war was of God.' A fortnight after, it 
was repeated before the troops at Burlington. 

^' Of John Craighead it is sai'd, ' He fought 
and preached alternately.' At the commence- 
ment of the war he raised a company from 
the members of his charge and joined Wash- 
ington's army in New Jersey. His friend, 
Dr. Cooper of the Middle Spring church, is 
also said to have been captain of a company. 
He preached 'before Colonel Montgomery's 
battalion under arms ' near Shippensburg, 



SQ IpS^byteriaxs and 

Pennsylvania, August 31, 1775, a sermon 
entitled 'Couraoe in a Good Cause.' 

'' Dr. King of Gonococheague was eminent 
for his patriotic zeal. He not only volun- 
teered and went as chaplain to the battalion 
which marched from his region, but many 
were the addresses which he delivered to in- 
spirit the hearts of the people in their devo- 
tion to the cause of the country. 

" In one of his sermons he said : ' Subjec- 
tion is demanded of us, but it is not the con- 
stitutional subjection which we are bound to 
pay. It is not a legal subjection to the king 
they wonld bring us to — that we already ac- 
knowledge — ^^?>ut it is a subjection to the Brit- 
ish j)arliament or to the people of Great 
Britain. They are not our lords or masters ; 
they are no more than our brethren and 
fellow-subjects. They call themselves, and 
it has been usual to call them, the mother- 
country. But this is only a name ; and if 
there was anything in it, one would think 
that it should lead them to treat us like chil- 



THE REVOLUTION. 87 

dren. But is it fatherly or motherly to strip 
us of everything, to rob us of every right and 
privilege, and then to whip and dragoon us 
with fleets and armies till we are pleased? 
No. As the name does not belong to them, 
so their conduct shows that they have no 
right to claim it. We are on an equal foot- 
ing with them in all respects — with respect 
to government and privileges — and therefore 
their usurpation ought to be opposed. Nay, 
when the king uses the executive branch of 
government, which is in his hand, to enable 
one part of his subjects to lord it over and 
oppress another, it is a sufficient ground for 
our applying to the laws of nature for our 
defence. 

" * But this is the case with us. We have 
no other refuge from slavery but those pow- 
ers which God has given us and allowed us 
to use in defence of our dearest rights ; and 
I hope he will bless our endeavors and give 
success to this 0|)pressed people, and that the 
wicked instruments of all these distractions 



«» PRESBYTERMNS AND 

shall meet their due reward. I earnestly 
wish that in such troublous times, while we 
plead for liberty, a proper guard may be 
kept against any turbulent or mobbish out- 
break, and that unanimity may be universal 
both in council and in action, and that we 
may still have an eye to the great God who 
has some important reasons for such severe 
corrections. Let us look to the rod and 
him that hath appointed it. Let us humble 
ourselv^es before him daily for our sins and 
depend upon him for success. If he be 
against us, in vain do we struggle. If the 
Lord be for us, though an host should en- 
camp against us, we need not be afraid.' " 

In one of the darkest hours of the strife, 
after the repulse in Canada, he said in a 
funeral discourse on the death of Mont- 
gomery : 

" Surely we have still reason for the exer- 
cise of faith and confidence in God that he 
will not give up a people to the unlimited 
will and power of others who have done all 



THE REVOLUTION. 89 

they could to avert the calamity, and who so 
strenuously adhered to the course of reason 
and humanity— a people who have been at- 
tacked with unprovoked violence and driven 
with the greatest reluctance to take up arms 
for their defence — a people whom he himself, 
by a series of gracious actings, hath gradu- 
ally led on to this condition. Therefore, when 
these are our circumstances, we may ration- 
ally judge that God is not an unconcerned 
spectator, but that he sees and will reward 
the persecutors. 

" Many things, indeed, seem to be against 
us— a very great and powerful enemy, who 
have long been trained to victory ; their 
numerous and savage allies, who, having lost 
their liberty, would have others in the same 
condition ; our weakness and inexperience in 
war ; internal enemies ; the loss of many of 
our friends and a beloved and able general. 
But let not these destroy our hopes or damp 
our spirits. To put too much confidence in 
man is the way to provoke God to deprive 



90 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

US of tliem. This may perhaps be the dark- 
ness which precedes the glorious day. . . . 
It is agreeable to God's method to bring low 
before he exalteth, to humble before he raises 
up. Let us trust in him and do our duty, 
and commit the event to His determination 
who can make these things to be for us 
which, by a judgment of sense, we are ready 
to say are against us." 

In a similar strain did he exhort the sol- 
diers marching to the field or address the 
people w^ho remained behind. " Be thou 
faithful unto death " was the text of one of 
his discourses. " There is no soldier," he 
said, "so truly courageous as a pious man. 
There is no army so formidable as those 
who are superior to the fear of death. Con- 
sequently, no one qualification is more neces- 
sary in a soldier than true religion." These 
words were accompanied by the tender coun- 
sels of a pastor whose affections followed his 
men to the scenes of danger and death. With 
the greatest earnestness he urged them to 



THE REVOLUTION. 91 

watch over their own souls, and not to bring 
dishonor on the cause to which they were 
attached. 

While several of the Presbyterian minis- 
ters performed service and led comiDanies to 
the field, a large number were engaged as 
chaplains in the army. Alexander Mc- 
Whorter, afterward Dr. McWhorter, of New- 
ark, was chaplain of Knox's brigade while it 
lay at White Plains, and often had General 
Washington among his hearers. James 
F. Armstrong, afterward of Elizabethtown, 
joined a volunteer company before his li- 
censure, and soon after he was ordained was 
appointed by Congress " chaplain of the sec- 
ond brigade of the Maryland forces." Adam 
Boyd was chaplain of the North Carolina 
brigade. Daniel McCalla was sent to Can- 
ada as chaplain with General Thompson's 
forces at the commencement of hostilities. 
Dr. John Podgers was chaplain of Heath's 
brigade. George Duffield, in connection 
with Mr. (afterward Bishop) White, was 



92 PBESBYTEBI*ANS AND 

employed as cliaplain of the Colonial Con- 
gress. 

" It was not unfrequently that the minister 
of peace felt called upon to engage in active 
service in the armies of his country, and not 
a few of the young men who had w^on dis- 
tinction in the use of carnal weapons became 
afterward still more eminent in the service 
of the gospel. When an unusual number 
of his people had been drafted to serve in 
the militia, James Latta, of Chestnut Level, 
with a view to encourage them, took his 
blanket, shouldered his knapsack and ac- 
companied them on their campaign. 

" Samuel Eakin, of Penn's Neck, was a 
strong Whig and the idol of the soldiers. 
Gifted wath extraordinary eloquence and 
accounted scarcely inferior to Whitefield, he 
was ever on the alert to kindle the j^atriotic 
zeal of his countrymen. When there were 
military trainings, or the soldiers were or- 
dered to march, he w^as present to address 
them and thrill them by his eloquence. 



THE REVOLUTION. 93 

"John Blair Smith, teacher, and afterward 
president of Hampden-Sidney College, was 
chosen captain of a company of students, and 
after the battle of Cowpens hurried to join 
the retreating army, and was only dissuaded 
by the remonstrances of the commanding 
officer, who represented to him that his pa- 
triotic speeches at home would be far more 
valuable than his services in the camp. 

" James Hall, of North Carolina, subse- 
quently the pioneer missionary in the valley 
of the Mississippi, was selected as leader, and 
accepted the command, of a company formed 
mainly from his own congregation, whom 
his fervid and pathetic appeals had inspired 
to arm against Cornwallis. Such was his 
reputation that he was offered the commis- 
sion of brigadier-general. 

" When Tarleton and his British dragoons 
spread consternation throughout the sur- 
rounding valley of Virginia, William Gra- 
ham, John Brown and Archibald Scott 
exhorted the stripling youths of their con- 



94 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

gregations — their elder brethren were ah^eady 
with Washington — to rise, join their neigh- 
bors and dispute the passage of the invader 
and his legion at Rockfish Gap, on the Blue 
Kidge. Graham was the master-spirit, but 
he was heartily supported by his co-presby- 
ters. On one occasion, wdien there was back- 
wardness to enlist, he had his own name 
enrolled. The effect was such that the com- 
pany was immediately filled, and he was 
unanimously chosen captain. 

'* It is worthy of mention that Dr. Ashbel 
Green, many years before he tlspired to be 
an ecclesiastical leader, had obtained the dis- 
tinction of orderly sergeant in the militia of 
the Revolutionary period, and had risked his 
life in the cause of his country. Dr. Moses 
Hoge served for a time, previous to entering 
the ministry, in the army of the Revolution. 
Dr. John Brown, president of Georgia Uni- 
versity, had at the early age of sixteen ex- 
changed the groves of the academy for the 
noise and bustle of the camp, and fought with 



THE REVOLUTION. 95 

intrepid spirit by the side of Sumter his coun- 
try's battles. Dr. Asa Hillyer, of Orange, 
N. J., while a youth, assisted his father, a 
surgeon in the Revolutionary army. Joseph 
Badger was in the battle of Bunker Hill, 
and served as soldier, baker, nurse, etc., in 
Arnold's expedition to Canada. 

"James White Stephenson, of South Car- 
olina, teacher of Andrew Jackson, served 
throughout the war, and on one occasion had 
his gun shivered in his hand by the enemy's 
shot, which glanced and killed the man who 
stood by his side. Lewis Feuilleteau Wil- 
son, who studied medicine before his atten- 
tion was directed to theology, served for 
several years as surgeon in the Continental 
army. Simpson, of Fishing Creek, S. C, 
encouraged his people to deeds of heroism or 
patient endurance, and was himself found 
bearing arms, and was in several engage- 
ments. Joseph Alexander, of the same State, 
was often a fugitive from his own home, 
while he offered his dwelling at all times 



96 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

as a hospital for. sick or wounded soldiers. 
Jonas Coe, one of the early members of the 
Albany presbytery, joined the army, along 
with his father and four brothers, while yet 
a youth of sixteen. Robert Marshall, after- 
ward an eloquent minister in Kentucky, was 
in six general engagements, one of which 
was the hard-fought battle of Monmouth. 
James Turner, the eloquent Virginian j)reach- 
er, could boast that at the early age of seven- 
teen he had seen service in the Revolution- 
ary army. 

" These are but a few of that large band 
identified with the interests of the Presbyte- 
rian Church, and then, or at a later period, 
serving at her altar, who freely risked their 
lives in the service of their country. Whether 
in the bosom of their own congregations or 
serving in the camp, they were animated by 
the same devotion to the cause of God and 
their native land. Their message every- 
where was welcome. The soldier was in- 
spired to bolder courage by the look and 



THE REVOLUTION. 97 

words of his own pastor or the pulpit exhor- 
tations of those who shared his hardships 
and his perils. The camp betrayed the 
presence of a conservative influence, which 
checked the vices which are wont to be in- 
digenous to it, while many who never lis- 
tened to the gos23el before were privileged to 
hear it at a crisis when at every hour they 
stood in peril of their lives. 

*' To the privations, hardships and cruelties 
of the war the Presbyterians were pre-emi- 
nsntly exposed. In them the very essence 
of rebellion was supposed to be concentrated, 
and by the v^anton plunderings and excesses 
of the marauding parties they suffered se- 
verely. Their Presbyterianism was prima 
facie evidence of guilt. A house that had a 
large Bible and David's Psalms in metre in 
it was supposed, as a matter of course, to be 
tenanted by rebels. To sing "Old Rouse" 
was almost as criminal as to have leveled a 
loaded musket at a British grenadier. 

"To the Presbyterian clergy the enemy felt 



98 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

an especial antipathy. They were accounted 
the ringleaders of rebellion. For them there 
was often not so much safety in their own 
dwellings as in the camp. When their peo- 
ple were scattered, or it was no longer safe 
to remain among them, the only alternative 
was to flee or join the army; and this alter- 
native was often presented. Not unfre- 
quently the duty of the chaplain or the 
pastor exposed him to dangers as great as 
those which the common soldier was called 
to meet. There was risk of person, some- 
times capture, and sometimes loss of life. 
Some ministers fled for safety. Dr. Rodgers 
was forced to absent himself from New York 
till the close of the war; McKnight, of 
Shrewsbury, N. J., was carried off a captive ; 
Richards, of Rahway, N. J., took warning 
and fled ; Dr. Buell, of East Hampton, L. I., 
who remained at his post, repeatedly ran im- 
minent risks even from the men whom his 
wit and urbanity finally disarmed. 

" Duffield was saved from ca]3ture at Tren- 



THE REVOLUTION. 9^ 

ton only by the timely warning of a friendly 
Quaker. At one time, while the enemy were 
on Staten Island, he preached to the soldiers 
in an orchard on the opposite side of the bay. 
The forks of a tree served him for a pulpit ; 
but the noise of the singing attracted the 
notice of the enemy, and soon the voice of 
praise was interrupted by the whistling of 
balls. But the preacher, undismayed by the 
danger, bade his hearers retire behind a hil- 
lock, and there finished his sermon. Daniel 
McCalla was confined for several months in 
a loathsome prison-ship near Quebec. Ne- 
hemiah Greenman, of Pittsgrove, JST. J., fled 
to the wilderness to escape the indignities so 
largely dealt out by the enemy to the Pres- 
byterian ministers. Azel Poe, of Wood- 
bridge, N. J., taken prisoner by the enemy, 
was confined for some time in the old susar- 
house. He came near having a fall in a 
small stream which the company had to ford 
on the way. The commanding officer kindly 
offered to carry Mr. Poe over on his back. 



100 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

The offer was accejDted ; and the suggestion 
of Mr. Koe to the officer that he was priest- 
ridden now if never before so convulsed him 
with laughter that he w^as like to have 
dropped his load. Less merciful was the 
experience of John Kosburgh, of Allentown, 
N. J., first a private soldier and afterward 
chaplain of a military company formed in 
his neighborhood, and who w^is shot down 
in cold blood by a body of Hessians to 
vv^honi he had surrendered himself a pris- 
oner. There was a strange commingling of 
carnal and spiritual weapons in the experi- 
ence of the camp. Joseph Patterson, one of 
the fathers of the presbytery of Redstone, 
had just knelt to pray under a shed w^hen a 
board on a line with his head w^as shivered 
by the discharge of a rifle. Stephen B. 
Balch preached a sermon on subjection to 
the higher powers while General Williams, 
to the annoyance of royalists who were pres- 
ent, protected him with loaded pistols in his 
belt. The ministers on the frontiers, ex- 



THE REVOLUTION. 101 

posed to the attacks of the Indians, were 
compelled to go constantly armed. Thad- 
deus Dod, with his people, exchanged his 
church for the fort that had been built on 
the Monongahela. Samuel Doak, of the 
Holston settlements, paused in his sermon at 
the alarm of an attack, seized his rifle, that 
stood by his side, and led his male hearers in 
pursuit of the foe. 

" Not a few of the ministers of the Pres- 
byterian Church were called into the civil 
service of their country. Jacob Green, the 
father of Dr. Ashbel Green, was a zealous 
patriot, and was elected, though contrary to 
his expressed wishes, a member of the pro- 
vincial Congress of New Jersey. He was 
chairman of the committee that drafted the 
constitution of the 8tate. 

" Henry Patillo was a member of the pro- 
vincial Congress of North Carolina. J. J. 
Zubly was a delegate from Georgia to the 
Continental Congress. 

" William Tennent of the Circular church. 



102 PRESBYTERIAH^ AND 

Charleston, was a member of the provincial 
Congress of South Carolina, and amid the 
fearful emergencies of the period, and at 
different hours of the same day, he was 
occasionally heard, in his church and in the 
State-house, addressing different audiences 
with equal animation on their temporal and 
spiritual interests. And not content with 
this, in company with William H. Dray- 
ton he made the circuit of the middle and 
up-country of the State to stimulate the 
people to resistance. 

*' David Caldwell was a member of the con- 
vention that formed the State constitution of 
North Carolina. Kettletas, of Jamaica, was 
chosen a delegate to the New York conven- 
tion; and Duffield, E-odgers, McWhorter 
and others were often consulted by civil and 
military officers in the trying crises of the 
Revolutionary period, and they were always 
prompt to render their services. Like 
Thomas Read, of Delaware, roused from his 
bed at midnight to describe the region which 



THE REVOLUTION. 103 

the army was to traverse, and in which he 
might act as a guide, they were never 
wanting when their country required their 
counsel or their aid. 

" It is not strange that their course was re- 
garded as specially obnoxious by the British 
troops. Their houses were plundered, their 
churches often burned and their books and 
manuscripts committed to the flames. The 
church of Midway, in Georgia, then Congre- 
gational, rendered itself obnoxious to the foe 
by its patriotic zeal. In November, 1778, a 
special detachment from Florida attacked the 
settlement, burned the church edifice, almost 
every dwelling-house, the crops of rice then in 
stack, drove off the negroes and horses, carried 
away the plate belonging to the planters, and 
outraged even the graves of the dead. Some 
of the members of the congregation were seized 
and imprisoned. Dr. McWhorter had re- 
moved to Carolina while the enemy, under 
Cornwallis, threatened the Southern country. 
Under the apprehension of danger, he fled 



104 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

with his family, and on his return found that 
his library, furniture and nearly all that he 
possessed had been sacrificed. Not less un- 
fortunate were Elihu Spencer at Trenton, 
and David Caldwell and Hugh McAden 
of North Carolina. On many occasions the 
soldiers studiously destroyed all that they 
could not carry away, and the Presbyterian 
clergy were generally the special objects of 
vengeance. 

"As might be expected, religion suffered 
greatly throughout the entire period of the 
w^ar. The church edifices were often taken 
possession of by an insolent soldiery and 
turned into hospitals or prisons, or perverted 
to still baser uses as stables or riding- 
schools. The church at Newtown had its 
steeple sawed off, and was used as a prison or 
guard-house till it was torn down and its 
siding used for the soldiers' huts. The chuich 
at CrumiDond was burned to save its being 
occupied by the enemy. That of Mount 
Holly was burned by accident or design. 



THE REVOLUTION. 105 

The one at Princeton was taken possession 
of by the Hessian soldiers, and stripped of 
its pews and gallery for fuel. A fireplace 
was built, and a chimney carried up through 
its roof. Supposing it would be defended 
against him, Washington planted his cannon 
a short distance off and commenced filing 
into it. It was subsequently occupied by the 
American soldiers ; and the close of the war 
found it dilapidated and open to the weather, 
while its interior was quite defaced and de- 
stroyed. 

"The church of Westfield was injured by 
the enemy, and its bell carried off to New 
York. The church of Babylon, Long Isl- 
and, was torn down by the enemy for military 
purposes. That of New Windsor w^as used 
as a hospital. This was the case also with 
the one at Morristown ; and repeatedly in the 
morning the dead were found lying in the 
pews. The one at Elizabethtow^n was made 
a hospital for the sick and disabled soldiers 
of the American army. Its bell sounded 



106 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

the note of alarm at the approach of the foe, 
while its floor was often the bed of the weary- 
soldier, and the seats of its pews served as 
the table from which he ate his scanty meal. 
At length it was fired by the torch of the 
refugee in vengeance for the uses to which 
it had been devoted. The churches at New 
York were taken possession of by the enemy. 
Prisoners were confined in them, or they were 
used by the British ofiicers for stabling their 
horses. Ethan Allen describes the filth that 
had accumulated in the one with which he 
was acquainted as altogether intolerable. 
More than fifty places of worship through- 
out the land were utterly destroyed by the 
enemy during the period of the war. The 
larger number of these were burned, others 
were leveled to the ground, while others 
still were so defaced or injured as to be 
utterly unfit for use. This was the case in 
several of the principal cities — at Philadel- 
phia and Charleston as well as New York. 
" But all did not escape. Caldwell of Eliz- 



THE REVOL UTION. 107 

abethtown was shot by a sentinel who is said 
to have been bribed by the British or the 
Tories, to whom he was especially obnoxious. 
Moses Allen, a classmate of President Madi- 
son at Princeton, pastor of the Midway church, 
Georgia, and chaplain of a regiment, was 
drowned near Savannah, February 8, 1779, 
in attempting to swim ashore from a prison- 
ship, the barbarous captain of which refused 
his friends boards for his coffin. And not a 
few others incurred hardships which, in all 
probability, shortened their days. It is cer- 
tainly remarkable, considering their exposure 
and the almost venomous hatred with which 
they were regarded by the enemy, that among 
tlie Presbyterian ministers the direct victims 
of the war were so few."* 

* " History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States 
of America." E. H. Gillett, D, D. Vol. i., chap. 10. 



CHAPTER yill. 

FORMAL ACTION OF THE PRESBYTERIAN 
CHURCH. 

TF, now, from such records as these we turn 
-*- to what may be termed the official action 
of the Presbyterian Church in the Revolu- 
tion, we shall find it full of ardent, high- 
toned patriotism. 

Dr. Charles Hodge, in his " Constitutional 
History of the Presbyterian Church in the 
United States," writes : 

"One of the first exercises of the power 
claimed by parliament to impose taxes on 
America was the passage of the Stamp Act in 
1764. The opposition to this measure was so 
general and vehement that the British gov- 
ernment thought proper to repeal the act, 
though they accompanied the repeal with the 
strongest declarations of their right to tax the 
colonies at discretion. In the controversy re- 

108 



THE REVOLUTION. 109 

lating to this subject the Synod of New York 
and Philadelphia publicly expressed their 
sympathy with their fellow-citizens. As 
soon as the repeal was known in this coun- 
try, ' an overture was made by Dr. Alison 
that an address be presented to our sovereign 
on the joyful occasion of the repeal of the 
Stamp Act, and thereby a confirmation of 
our liberties, and at the same time proposing 
a copy of an address for examination, which 
Avas read and approved,' but not recorded. 
The Synod also addressed a pastoral letter to 
the churches, filled with patriotic and pious 
sentiments. They remind the people that 
after God had delivered the country from 
the horrors of the French and Indian war, 
instead of rendering to him according to the 
multitude of his mercies, they had becomie 
more wicked than ever. ' The Almighty, 
thus provoked, permitted counsels of the 
most pernicious tendency both to Great 
Britain and her colonies. The imposition 
of unusual taxes, a severe restriction of our 



110 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

trade and an almost total stagnation of busi- 
ness, threatened us with universal ruin. A 
long suspense whether we should be deprived 
of or restored to a peaceable enjoyment of the 
inestimable privileges of English liberty filled 
every breast with painful anxiety.' They 
express their joy that government had been 
induced to resort to moderate measures in- 
stead of appealing to force, and call upon the 
people to bless God, who, notwithstanding 
their sins, had saved them from the horrors 
of a civil war. They finally earnestly exhort 
their people not to add to the common stock 
of guilt, but *to be strict in observing the 
laws and ordinances of Jesus Christ, to pay 
a sacred regard to his Sabbaths, to reverence 
his holy name, and to adorn the doctrine of 
God our Saviour by good works. We pray 
you,' say the Synod, ' to seek earnestly the 
saving knowledge of Christ and the internal 
power ai>d spirit of religion. Thus may 
you hope for the continued kindness of a gra- 
cious Providence, and this is the right way to 



THE REVOLUTION. Ill 

express your gratitude to the Father of mer- 
cies for your late glorious deliverance. But 
persisting to grieve his Holy Spirit by a 
neglect of vital religion and a continuance 
of sin, you have reason to dread that a holy 
God will punish you yet seven times more 
for your iniquities.' " 

As the indications of the coming conflict 
began to multiply, the Synod endeavored to 
prepare their people for the trial. Almost 
every year they appointed days for special 
prayer and fasting, and presented '' the 
threatening aspect of public affairs as one 
of the most prominent reasons for their ob- 
servance." 

On the 17th of May, 1775, the Synod met 
in Philadelphia, and almost side by side with 
the second Continental Congress. In that 
Congress sat George Washington, Benjamin 
Franklin, Samuel Adams, John Adams, 
Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, John 
Jay and others, their worthy compeers. Near 
by, in the Synod of New York and Phila- 



112 FBESBYTEEIANS AND 

delpliia, then our General Assembly, sat 
Dr. Witherspoon, William Tennent, Dr. Rod- 
gers, George Duffield, John Brainerd, Robert 
Cooper, for a time chaplain in the army ; 
McWhorter, "who shared the councils of 
Washington on the memorable 26th of De- 
cember, 1776, when the American troops 
crossed the Delaware, and who was after- 
w^ard chaplain of Knox's brigade ; James 
Caldwell, inheriting with his Huguenot 
blood a feeling of opposition to tyranny and 
tyrants; and Jedediah Chapman, the father 
of Presbyterianism in Central New York, 
an:l others besides, wtII worthy to stand 
in the foremost rank of American and 
Christian patriots." 

^' Foremost among them," w^rites Dr. Gillett, 
whom w^e have quoted above, " was the ven- 
erable Dr. Witherspoon, Scotch in accent and 
in strength of conviction, but American in 
feeling to his heart's core, and destined for 
six years to represent his adopted State in 
the general Congress, and draw up many 



THE REVOLUTION. 113 

of the most important state papers of the 
day. 

" With a clear intellect, a calm judgment, 
indomitable strength of purpose and a.reso- 
hite and unflinching courage, he combined 
that conscientious integrity and religious 
feeling which made him among his associ- 
ates in the Church what Washington was 
in the field, and secured for him the respect 
and veneration of all." 

The following record occurs in the min- 
utes of this body : " The Synod, considering 
the present alarming state of public affairs, 
do unanimously judge it their duty to call 
all the congregations under their care to 
solemn fasting, humiliation and prayer, and 
for this purpose appoint the last Thursday 
of June next to be carefully and religiously 
observed. But as the Continental Congress 
are now sitting, who may probably a]3point a 
fast for the same purpose, the Synod, from 
respect to that august body and for greater 
harmony with other denominations, and for 



114 pbesbytebiAns and 

the greater public order, if the Congress shall 
appoint a day not above four weeks distant 
from the said last Thursday of June, order 
that the congregations belonging to this Syn- 
od do keep the day appointed by Congress 
in obedience to this resolution ; and if they 
appoint a day more distant, the Synod order 
both to be observed by all our communion. 
The Synod also earnestly recommend it to all 
the congregations under their care to spend 
the afternoon of the last Thursday in every 
month in public solemn prayer to God dur- 
ing the continuance of our present troubles." 

This recommendation of the observance of 
a day for prayer every month was frequently 
repeated during the war. 

Witherspoon, Rodgers and Caldwell were 
appointed a committee to perform the then 
unusual task of drawing up a pastoral letter 
to be sent to the churches. 

"It bore throughout," says Dr. Gillett, 
" the stamp of their deep feeling and patri- 
otic as well as religious zeal. Five hundred 



THE REVOLUTION. 115 

copies of this noble letter were ordered to be 
printed and circulated at the Synod's ex- 
pense. Thus they were scattered through- 
out all the congregations, contributing in no 
small measure to kindle and sustain the pa- 
triotic zeal of the country." 

"The Presbyterian Church, by act of its 
highest judicatory, thus took its stand at 
Philadelphia by the side of the American 
Congress, then in session, and its influence 
was felt in the most decisive manner through- 
out the bounds of the Church." 
This pastoral letter thus begins : 
" The Synod of New York and Philadel- 
phia being met at a time when public affairs 
wear so threatening an aspect, and when, 
unless God in his sovereign providence speed- 
ily prevents it, all the horrors of a civil war 
throughout this great continent are to be ap- 
prehended, were of opinion that they could 
not discharge their duty to the numerous 
congregations under their care without ad- 
dressing them at this important crisis. As 



116 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

the firm belief and habitual recollection of 
the power and presence of the living God 
ought at all times to possess the minds of 
real Christians, so in seasons of public ca- 
lamity, when the Lord is known by the 
judgments which he executeth, it would be 
an ignorance or indifference highly criminal 
not to look up to him with reverence, to im- 
plore his mercy by humble and fervent 
prayer, and, if possible, to prevent his ven- 
geance by timely repentance. We do, there- 
fore, brethren, beseech you in the most earn- 
est manner to look beyond the immediate 
authors either of your sufferings or fears, 
and to acknowledge the holiness and justice 
of the Almighty in the present visitation." 

The Synod then exhorts the people to con- 
fession and repentance, reminding them that 
their prayers should be attended with a sin- 
cere purpose and thorough endeavor after 
personal and family reformation. *' If thou 
prepare thine heart and stretch out thine 
hand toward him ; if iniquity be in thine 



THE REVOLUTION. 117 

hands, put it far away, and let not wicked- 
ness dwell in thy tabernacles." 

They considered it also a proper time to 
press on all of every rank seriously to con- 
sider the things which belong to their eternal 
peace, saying, " Hostilities long feared have 
now taken place ; the sword has been drawn 
in one province, and the whole continent, 
with hardly any exception, seem determined 
to defend their rights by force of arms. If 
at the same time the British ministry shall 
continue to enforce their claims by violence, 
a lasting and bloody contest must be ex- 
pected. Surely, then, it becomes those w^ho 
have taken up arms and profess a willingness 
to hazard their lives in the cause of liberty 
to be prepared for death, which to many 
must be certain, and to every one is a possi- 
ble or probable event. 

" We have long seen with concern the cir- 
cumstances which occasioned, and the grad- 
ual increase of, this unhappy difference. As 
ministers of the gospel of peace, we have 



118 FRESBYTERIfLNS AND 

ardently wished that it might be, and often 
hoped that it woukl have been, more early 
accommodated. It is well known to you, 
otherwise it would be imprudent indeed thus 
publicly to profess, that we have not been in- 
strumental in inflaming the minds of the 
people or urging them to acts of violence 
and disorder. Perhaps no instance can be 
given on so interesting a subject in which 
political sentiments have been so long and so 
fully kept from the pulpit, and even malice 
itself has not charged us with laboring from 
the press. But things have now come to 
such a state that as we do not w^ish to conceal 
our opinions as men and citizens, so the re- 
lation in which we stand to you seemed to 
make the present improvement of it to your 
spiritual benefit an indispensable duty." 

Then follows an exhortation directed prin- 
cipally to young men who might offer them- 
selves as " champions of their country's 
cause" to cultivate piety, to reverence the 
name of God and to trust his providence. 



THE REVOLUTION. 119 

"The Lord is with you while ye be with 
him ; and if ye seek him, he will be found 
of you : but if ye forsake him, he will for- 
sake you." 

After this exhortation the Synod offered 
special counsels to the churches as to their 
public and general conduct: 

" First. In carrying on this important 
struggle, let every opportunity be taken to 
express your attachment and respect to our 
sovereign King George, and to the revolu- 
tion principles by which his august family 
was seated on the British throne. We rec- 
ommend, indeed, not only allegiance to him 
from principle and duty as the first magis- 
trate of the empire, but esteem and reverence 
for the person of the prince, who has merited 
well of his subjects on many accounts, and 
who has probably been misled into his late 
and present measures by those about him; 
neither have we any doubt that they them- 
selves have been in a great degree deceived 
by false representations from interested per- 



120 PEESBYTERIANS AND 

sons residing in America. It gives us the 
greatest pleasure to say, from our own cer- 
tain knowledge of all belonging to our 
communion, and from the best means of in- 
formation of far the greatest part of all de- 
nominations in this country, that the present 
opposition to the measures of administration 
does not in the least arise from disaffection 
to the king or a desire of separation from the 
parent State. We are happy in being able 
with truth to affirm that no part of America 
would either have approved or permitted 
such insults as have been offered to the sov- 
ereign in Great Britain. We exhort you, 
therefore, to continue in the same disposition, 
and not to suffer apprehension or injury 
itself easily to provoke you to anything 
which may seem to betray contrary senti- 
ments. Let it ever appear that you only 
desire the preservation and security of those 
rights which belong to you as freemen and 
Britons, and that reconciliation upon these 
terms is your most ardent desire. 



THE REVOLUTION. 121 

"Secondly. Be careful to maintain the 
union which at present subsists through the 
colonies. Nothing can be more manifest 
than that the success of every measure de- 
pends upon its being inviolably preserved, 
and therefore we hope you will leave noth- 
ing undone which can promote that end. 
In particular as the Continental Congress, 
now sitting at Philadelphia, consists of del- 
egates chosen in the most free and unbiased 
manner by the body of the people, let them 
not only be treated with respect and encour- 
aged in their difficult service, not only let 
your prayers be offered up to God for his 
direction in their proceedings, but adhere 
firmly to their resolutions, and let it be seen 
that they are able to bring out the whole 
strength of this vast country to carry them 
into execution. We would also advise for 
the same purpose that a spirit of candor, 
charity and mutual esteem be preserved and 
promoted toward those of different religious 
denominations. Persons of probity and prin- 



^ 



122 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

ciple of every profession should be united 
together as servants of the same Master; and 
the experience of our happy concord hitherto 
in a state of liberty should engage all to unite 
in support of the common interest ; for there 
is no example in history in which civil lib- 
erty was destroyed and the rights of con- 
science preserved entire. 

" Thirdly. We do earnestly exhort and be- 
seech the societies under our care to be strict 
and vigilant in their private government, and 
to watch over the morals of their several 
members." 

This duty is urged at some length, and 
then the letter proceeds thus : 

"Fourthly. We cannot but recommend 
and urge in the warmest manner a regard to 
order and the public peace ; and as in many 
places, during the confusion that prevails, 
legal proceedings have become difficult, it is 
hoped that all persons will conscientiously 
pay their just debts and to the utmost of 



THE REVOLUTION. 123 

their power serve one another, so that the 
evils inseparable from a civil war may not 
be augmented by wantonness and irreg- 
ularity. 

"Fifthly. We think it of importance at 
this time to recommend to all, of every rank, 
but especially to those who may be called 
to action, a spirit of humanity and mercy. 
Every battle of the warrior is with confused 
noise and garments rolled in blood. It is 
impossible to appeal to the sword without 
being exposed to many scenes of cruelty and 
slaughter, but it is often observed that civil 
wars are carried on with a rancor and spirit 
of revenge much greater than those between 
independent States. The injuries received 
or supposed in civil wars wound more deeply 
than those of foreign enemies. It is, there- 
fore, more necessary to guard against this 
abuse, and recommend that meekness and 
gentleness of spirit which is the noblest at- 
tendant on true valor. That man will fight 
most bravely who never begins to fight till it 



124 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

is necessary, and who ceases to fight as soon 
as the necessity is over. 

" Lastly. We would recommend to ail the 
societies under our care not to content them- 
selves with attending devoutly on general 
fasts, but to continue habitually in the exer- 
cise of prayer, and to have frequent occasional 
voluntary meetings for solemn intercession 
with God on this imjDortant trial. Those 
who are immediately exposed to danger need 
your sympathy, and we learn from the Scrip- 
tures that fervency and importunity are the 
very characters of that prayer of the right- 
eous man that availeth much. We conclude 
with our most earnest j)rayer that the God 
of heaven may bless you in your temporal 
and spiritual concerns, and that the present 
unnatural disjDute may be speedily termi- 
nated by an equitable and lasting settlement 
on constitutional principles." 

The Rev. Mr. Halsey, it is recorded, dis- 
sented from that paragraph of the above let- 
ter which contains the declarations of alle- 



THE REVOLUTION. 125 

giance. This gentleman, it seems, was at 
least a year in advance, not only of the Syn- 
od, but of Congress. This pastoral letter 
contains a decided and unanimous expression 
on the part of the Synod of the side which 
it took in the great struggle for the liberties 
of America. It certainly does them and the 
Church which they represented great honor. 
They adhered to the last to the duties which 
they owed their sovereign ; they approved 
of demanding no new liberties ; they re- 
quired only the secure possession of privi- 
leges which they were entitled to consider 
as their birthright. 

The presbytery of Hanover, in a memo- 
rial presented to the legislature of Virginia 
in 1776, expressed with earnestness their 
hearty adoption of their country's cause. 
" Your memorialists," they say, " are gov- 
erned by the same sentiments which have 
inspired the United States of America, and 
are determined that nothing in our power or 
influence shall be wanting to give success to 



126 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

tlieir common cause. We would also repre- 
sent that dissenters from the Church of Eng- 
land in this country have ever been desirous 
to conduct themselves as peaceable members 
of the civil government, for which reason 
they have hitherto submitted to several ec- 
clesiastical burdens and restrictions that are 
inconsistent with equal liberty. But now, 
when the many and grievous oppressions of 
our mother-country have laid this continent 
under the necessity of casting off the yoke 
of tyranny and of forming independent gov- 
ernments upon equitable and liberal founda- 
tions, we flatter ourselves we shall be freed 
from all the encumbrances which a spirit of 
domination, prejudice or bigotry hath inter- 
woven with our political systems. This we 
are the more strongly encouraged to expect 
by the Declaration of Rights, so universally 
applauded for that dignity, firmness and pre- 
cision with which it delineates and asserts 
the privileges of society and the prerogatives 
of human nature, and which we embrace as 



THE REVOLUTION. 127 

the magna charta of our commonwealth, that 
can never be violated without endangering 
the grand superstructure it was destined to 
\ sustain." 

As at the beginning, so also at the close, 
of the war, the Synod directed a pastoral 
letter to their congregations expressing their 
sentiments in relation to the contest. In 
the letter written in 1783 they say : 

"We cannot help congratulating you on 
the general and almost universal attachment 
of the Presbyterian body to the cause of lib- 
erty and the rights of mankind. This has 
been visible in their conduct, and has been 
confessed by the complaints and resentment 
of the common enemy. Such a circumstance 
ought not only to afford us satisfaction on 
the review as bringing credit to the body in 
general, but to increase our gratitude to God 
for the happy issue of the war. Had it been 
unsuccessful, we must have drunk deeply of 
the cup of suffering. Our burnt and wasted 
churches and our plundered dwellings in 



128 pbesbytelTtans and 

such places as fell under the power of our 
adversaries are but an earnest of what we 
must have suffered had they finally pre- 
vailed. 

"The Synod therefore requests you to 
render thanks to almighty God for all his 
mercies, spiritual and temporal, and in a 
particular manner for establishing the inde- 
pendence of the United States of America. 
He is the supreme Disposer, and to him be- 
longs the glory, the victory and the majesty. 
We are persuaded you will easily recollect 
many circumstances in the course of the 
struggle which point out his special and 
signal interjDOsition in our favor. Our 
most remarkable successes have generally 
been when things had just before worn the 
most unfavorable aspect, as at Trenton and 
Saratoga at the beginning, in South Caro- 
lina and Virginia toward the end, of the 
war. They specify, among other mercies, 
the assistance derived from France and the 
happy selection ' of a commander-in-chief of 



THE REVOLUTION. 129 

the armies of the United States, who in this 
important and difficult charge has given uni- 
versal satisfaction, who was alike acceptable 
to the citizen and the soldier, to the State in 
which he w^as born and to every other on the 
continent, and whose character and influence, 
after so long service, are not only unimpaired 
but augmented.' " 

On the election of Washington to the pres- 
idency, the General Assembly appointed a 
committee to prej)are an address of congrat- 
ulation, which was as follows : 

"Sir: The General Assembly of the Pres- 
byterian Church in the United States of 
America embrace the earliest opportunity in 
their power to testify the lively and un- 
feigned pleasure which they, with the rest 
of their fellow-citizens, feel on your appoint- 
ment to the first office in the nation. 

" We adore almighty God, the author of 
every perfect gift, who hath endued you with 
such a rare and happy assemblage of talents 
as hath rendered you equally necessary to 



130 ^Presbyterians and 

your country in war and in peace. Your 
military achievement^ ensured safety and 
glory to America in the late arduous conflict 
for freedom, while your disinterested conduct 
and uniformly just discernment of the public 
interest gained you the entire confidence of 
the people ; and in the present interesting 
period of public affairs the influence of your 
personal character moderates the divisions of 
political parties and promises a permanent 
establishment of the civil government. 

" From a retirement more glorious than 
thrones and sceptres you have been called 
to your present elevated station by the voice 
of a great and free people, and with an 
unanimity of suffrage that has few, if any, 
examples in history. A man more ambi- 
tious of fame or less devoted to his country 
would have refused an office in which his 
honors could not be augmented, and where 
they might possibly be subject to a reverse. 
We are happy that God has inclined your 
heart to give yourself once more to the 



THE n EVOLUTION. 131 

public. And we derive a favorable presage 
of the event from the zeal of all classes of 
the j)eople and tlieir confidence in your 
virtues, as well as from the knowledge and 
dignity with which the Federal councils are 
filled. But we derive a presage even more 
flattering from the piety of your character. 
Public virtue is the most certain means of 
public felicity, and religion is the surest 
basis of virtue. We therefore esteem it a 
peculiar happiness to behold in our chief 
magistrate a steady, uniform, avowed friend 
of the Christian religion, who has commenced 
his administration in rational and exalted 
sentiments of piety, and who, in his private 
conduct, adorns the doctrines of the gospel 
of Christ, and on the most public and solemn 
occasions devoutly acknowledges the govern- 
ment of divine Providence. 

" The example of distinguished characters 
will ever possess a powerful and extensive in- 
fluence on the public mind. And when we 
see in such a conspicuous station the amiable 



132 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

example of piety to God, of benevolence to 
men and of a pure and virtuous patriotism, 
we naturally hope that it will diffuse its in- 
fluence, and that eventually the most happy 
consequences will result from it. To the force 
of imitation we will endeavor to add the 
wholesome instructions of religion. We shall 
consider ourselves as doing an acceptable ser- 
vice to God in our profession when we con- 
tribute to render men sober, honest and in- 
dustrious citizens, and the obedient subjects 
of a lawful government. In these pious 
labors we hope to imitate the most worthy 
of our brethren of other Christian denomi- 
nations, and to be imitated by them, assured 
that if we can by mutual and generous emu- 
lation promote truth and virtue, we shall 
render a great and important service to the 
republic — shall receive encouragement from 
every wise and good citizen, and, above all, 
meet the approbation of our divine Master. 

" We pray almighty God to have you al- 
ways in his holy keeping. May he prolong 



THE REVOLUTION. 133 

your valuable life, an ornament and a bless- 
ing to your country, and at last bestow on you 
the glorious reward of a faithful servant !" 

To which Washington replied : 
^' To the General Assembly of the Preshyterian 

Church in the United States of America. 

" Ge^'TLEMEN : I received with great sen- 
sibility the testimonial given by the General 
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the 
United States of America of the lively and 
unfeigned pleasure experienced by them on 
my appointment to the first office in the 
nation. 

"Although it will be my endeavor to avoid 
being elated by the too favorable opinion 
which your kindness for me may have in- 
duced you to express of the importance of 
my former conduct and the effect of my 
future services, yet, conscious of the disinter- 
estedness of my motives, it is not necessary 
for me to conceal the satisfaction I have felt 
upon finding that my com23liance w^ith the 
call of my country and my dependence on 



134 PEESBYTEEIANS AND 

the assistance of Heaven to support me in 
my arduous undertaking have, so f^ir as I 
can learn, met the universal approbation of 
my countrymen. While I reiterate the pro- 
fessions of my dependence upon Heaven as 
the source of all public and private blessings, 
I will observe that the general prevalence of 
piety, philanthropy, honesty, industry and 
economy seems, in the ordinary course of 
human affairs, particularly necessary for ad- 
vancing and confirming the happiness of our 
country. While all men within our territo- 
ries are protected in worshiping the Deity 
according to the dictates of their consciences, 
it is rationally to be expected from them in 
return that they will all be emulous of evin- 
cing the sincerity of their professions by the 
innocence of their lives and the benevolence 
of their actions. For no man who is profli- 
gate in his morals or a bad member of the 
civil community can possibly be a true 
Christian or a credit to his own religious 
society. 



THE REVOLUTION. 135 

" I desire you to accept my acknowledg- 
ments for your laudable endeavors to render 
men sober, honest and good citizens, and the 
obedient subjects of a lawful government, as 
well as for your prayers to almighty God for 
his blessings on our common country and 
the instrument which he has been pleased to 
make use of in the administration of its gov- 
ernment.'" 

" George Washington." 

* The original of this letter is in the possession of the Pres- 
byterian Board of Publication, Philadelphia. 



CHAPTER IX. 

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE AND DR. 
JOHN WITHERSPOON. 

npHE services of Presbyterianism in the 
-^ cause of American liberty present two 
points of special and commanding interest, 
the one concerning the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, the other concerning the organiza- 
tion of the national confederacy. 

We are apt to think that the Declaration 
of Independence was so completely a matter 
of course that there could have been neither 
question as to its propriety nor opposition to 
it except from enemies to the patriot cause. 
In truth, however, the subject w^as hedged 
about with difficulties numerous and great. 
Even for a full year after the martyrs had 
fallen at Lexington, Concord and Breed's 
Hill (we venture to give the true name in 
this last case, as it is well known that neither 

186 



THE REVOLUTION. 137 

was tlie battle fought, nor does the monu- 
ment stand, on Bunker Hill), vast numbers 
of true-hearted patriots shrank from the 
thought of severance from the mother-coun- 
try as a true son shrinks from renouncing 
connection with his parental home. 

Yet on the 17th of May, 1776, kept as 
a national fast, Mr. Bancroft tells us that 
"George Dujffield, the minister of the Third 
Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, with 
John Adams for a listener, drew a paral- 
lel between George III. and Pharaoh, and 
inferred that the same providence of God 
which had rescued the Israelites intended 
to free the Americans." 

Whoever hesitated, Presbyterians did not. 
On the day this sermon was preached the 
provincial assembly of Pennsylvania voted 
to leave the question of independence to the 
discretion of their delegates in Congress, 
knowing that a majority of those delegates 
were op20osed to independence, Dickinson 
pledging his word that they would vote 



138 presbytebIans and 

against the measure. The next day the most 
copious and animated debate ever held upon 
the subject took place in Congress, lasting 
from ten in the morning till seven in the 
evening, Eobert Livingston of New York, 
"Wilson, Dickinson and Edward Eutledge ar- 
dently opposing it. 

On Monday the 10th of June Rutledge 
moved that the question be postponed for 
three weeks, and it is significant of the state 
of feeling that this motion, after a whole 
day's discussion, was carried. 

The next day a committee of five, with 
Jefferson at its head, was appointed to pre- 
pare a formal Declaration of Independence 
and report it to the House. 

On Friday the 28th of June the delega- 
tion from the provincial Congress of New 
Jersey ajDpeared in Congress, and among 
them the only clergyman that sat in that 
body, Dr. John Witherspoo7i, Presbyterian 
minister and president of the College of 
\ New Jersey. 



THE REVOLUTION. 139 

Of Dr. Witlierspoon, Mr. Bancroft writes 
in the sixth chapter of his history : 

" In New Jersey, Witherspoon, a Presbyte- 
rian minister and ^as high a Son of Liberty 
as any in America,^ met the committee at 
New Brunswick in July, 1774, and with 
"William Livingston, member of the Pres- 
byterian congregation of Elizabeth, New 
Jersey, labored to instruct their delegates 
that the tea should not be paid for." 

Also, in his sixty-seventh chapter: "The 
new provincial Congress of New Jersey, 
which came fresh from the people with 
ample powers, and organized itself on the 
evening of the 11th of June, 1776, was 
opened with prayer by John Witherspoon, 
an eloquent Scottish minister of the same 
faith with John Knox, a man of great abil- 
ity, learning and liberality, ready to dash into 
pieces all false gods. Born near Edinburgh, 
trained up at its university, in 1768 he re- 
moved to Princeton to become the successor 
of Jonathan Edwards, Davies and Finley as 



140 PRESBY'TEttlANS AND 

president of its college. A combatant of 
skepticism and the narrow philosoj)liy of the 
materialists, he was deputed by Somei'set 
county to take part in applying his noble 
theories to the construction of a civil gov- 
ernment." 

A lineal descendant of John Knox, he 
was born in Haddingtonshire, Scotland, Feb- 
ruary 5, 1722 ; ordained to the ministry in 
1745; became president of the College of New 
Jersey in 1768; died near Princeton, Septem- 
ber 15, 1794. He comes before us in his- 
tory as a " many-sided man." A scholar of 
the largest culture, a profound theologian, a 
faithful and laborious pastor, an orator of 
commanding eloquence, a successful teacher, 
a voluminous and successful author, a skillful 
financier and a great leader among men, — it 
is difficult to say in which of these characters 
he shone to most advantage. By birth and 
training the adversary of wrong and oppres- 
sion in whatever form, immediately on his 
arrival in this country he identified himself 



THE REVOLUTION. 141 

with the colonial cause. Grasping, as by in- 
tuition, the great principles involved in the 
struggle with the mother-country, his pow- 
erful advocacy of American rights speedily 
elevated him to his proper place by the side 
of Hancock, JeflPerson, Franklin and their 
illustrious compeers. 

As a member of the convention that 
formed the constitution of New Jersey, Dr. 
Witherspoon astonished and impressed his 
coadjutors by his knowledge and wisdom as 
a civilian. 

For six years he was a member of the 
Continental Congress, for the duties of which 
position "he was eminently qualified not only 
by the clearness and vigor of his intellect, the 
calmness of his judgment and his indomita- 
ble strength of purpose, but by an uncommon 
familiarity with the forms of public business, 
acquired from the position which he held as 
a leader in the church courts in his native 
country." The value of his services in that 
body cannot be overestimated, and the extent 



142 PBESBYTEBIANS AND 

and weight of liis influence on the country 
was immeasurable. 

Sanderson, in his " Biography of the Sign- 
ers of the Declaration," writes: 

" It is impossible to specify the numerous 
services in which he was engaged during his 
long continuance in Congress. 

"His talents as a politician had been 
thoroughly tested previous to his emigration, 
as leader of the orthodox party in the Church 
of Scotland ; and he was fully prepared to 
play a much more important part on the 
theatre of our grand Revolution than by 
disjDlaying his eloquence and sagacity in the 
Presbyteries, Synods and General Assemblies 
of Scotland." 

The firm and united adherence to Wash- 
ington and his cause of the large Scotch and 
Scotch-Irish population was due in no small 
degree to their confidence in the piety, ability 
and wisdom of Dr. Witherspoon. 

He was a member of " the secret com- 
mittee" of Conerress, whose duties were of the 



THE REVOLUTION. 143 

first importance in the prosecution of tlie 
war. 

In November, 1776, when the army was 
on the eve of dissolution and all hearts were 
lapsing into despair. Dr. Witherspoon and two 
others were appointed a committee to visit 
and confer with Washington on the condition 
of affairs. 

In December, when Congress had been 
driven from Philadelphia to Baltimore, Dr. 
Witherspoon, Richard Henry Lee and John 
Adams, having been appointed a committee 
for the purpose, issued a heart-stirring ap- 
peal to the people. Dr. Witherspoon was 
an active and very efficient member of the 
"Board of War." 

In 1778 he was appointed, with three 
others, to prepare a manifesto on the brutal 
treatment by the British of American pris- 
oners, and the eloquent and touching j^aper 
reported by this committee was adopted by 
a unanimous vote of Congress. 

The same year he was appointed, with 



144 PRESBYTEjflANS AND 

Robert Morris, Elbridge Gerry, Richard 
Henry Lee and Gouverneiir Morris, a com- 
mittee upon the finances. 

In 1779 he greatly distinguished himself 
as a member of the committee to secure sup- 
plies for the famishing army. 

The same year, when a body of people re- 
siding within the "New Hampshire Grants" 
insisted upon establishing themselves as an 
independent State, giving rise to great con- 
fusion and bitter animosities, Dr. Wither- 
spoon, with four others, w^as a]3pointed a 
committee to conduct the delicate negotia- 
tions involved in this perplexing matter. 

In the suj)erlatively important financial 
questions that harassed and imperiled the 
infant republic, the adjustment of which 
" saved the country and exalted a Morris to 
the rank and grandeur of a Washington," 
Witherspoon was, more than any other man, 
the trusted counselor of the great financier. 

Through the darkest hour of the war his 
courage w^as conspicuous and his resolution 



THE REVOLUTION. 145 

indomitable. When, after the defeat on Long 
Island, Lord Howe's propositions came before 
Congress, Mr. Bancroft says : 

*^ Witherspoon, with a very great majority 
of the members, looked upon them as an 
insult." 

" Like Hush and Witherspoon, John Ad- 
ams spoke vehemently against the proposed 
conference." 

Again Bancroft writes: " It was from "VVith- 
ei'spoon of New Jersey that Madison, bred in 
the school of Presbyterian dissenters under 
Y/itherspoon at Princeton, imbibed the lesson 
of perfect freedom in matters of conscience. 
When the constitution of that State was 
framed by a convention comj)Osed chiefly of 
Presbyterians, they established perfect liberty 
of conscience without the blemish of a test." 

On the 17th of May, 1776, appointed by 
Congress as a general fast day. Dr. Wither- 
spoon preached a sermon, in which lie said : 

''' It would be criminal not to observe the 
interposition of Providence in American af- 

10 



146 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

fairs. Some important victories have been 
gained with so little loss that enemies will 
probably think it has been dissembled. The 
signal advantage gained by the evacuation 
of Boston and the shameful flight of the 
army and navy of Britain was brought about 
without the loss of a man. 

" I willingly embrace the opportunity of 
declaring my opinion that the cause in which 
America is now in arms is the cause of jus- 
tice, liberty and human nature. 

"Everybody must perceive the absolute 
necessity of union. 

" He is the best friend of American liberty 
who is most sincere and active in promoting 
true and undefiled religion. An avowed en- 
emy to God I scruple not to call an enemy 
to his country. I do not wish you to oppose 
any man's religion, but everybody's wicked- 
ness. The cause is sacred, and its champi- 
ons should be holy. 

" I exhort all who go not to the field to 
apply themselves with the utmost diligence 



THE REVOLUTION. 147 

to works of industry. It is in your power 
by this means not only to supply the neces- 
sities, but to add strength to your country. 

" Suffer me to recommend to you frugality 
in your families and every other article of 
expense. Temperance in meals, moderation 
and decency in dress, furniture and equipage 
have, I think, generally been characteristics 
of a distinguished patriot. 

" God grant that in America true religion 
and civil liberty may be inseparable, and that 
the unjust attempts to destroy the one may in 
the issue tend to the support and establish- 
ment of the other." 

This sermon was published and dedicated 
to "The Hon. John Hancock, Esq., Presi- 
dent of the Congress of the United States of 
America." To the sermon was apjoended an 
"Address to the natives of Scotland residins: 
in America." Of this sermon and address a 
writer in a recent number of the " New 
York Evangelist" says: 

" This sermon was printed in Philadelphia 



148 PRESBYTEEIANS AND 

and reprinted the next year at Glasgow. 
The object of the editors in thus reproducing 
it was openly avowed in their ]3reface. It 
was * to show what artful means and Mla- 
cious arguments have been made use of by 
ambitious and self-designing men to stir up 
the poor infatuated Americans to the present 
rebellious measures — what an active hand 
even Dr. Witherspoon has had therein — to 
convince his friends in this country of the 
truth of his being a chief promoter of the 
American revolt, and that, if he falls into 
the hands of government and meets with the 
demerit of his offence, he hath justly and de- 
servedly procured it to himself.' 

" In an appendix to the sermon it was 
added to his discredit — although what was 
then a reproach to his name has now become 
an honor to his memory — that ' the scheme 
of independency, it is said, was first planned 
by him, and success to the independent States 
of America, we are told, Avas a favorite toast 
at the doctor's table when entertaining a 



THE REVOLUTION. 149 

number of delegates before it was resolved 
on by the Congress.' 

" The language of the editor of the Scot- 
tish edition of the sermon reflects the bitter- 
ness with which the name of Dr. Wither- 
sj^oon was mentioned in Scotland. He went 
forth from his native land almost an exile, 
virtually ostracised by that ^moderatism' in 
the Church which he had so scathingly ex- 
posed and so keenly ridiculed in his ' Cha- 
racteristics.' 

" We may add that for the facts which we 
have here given we are indebted to a copy 
of the Scotch edition of Dr. Witherspoon's 
sermon, Glasgow, 1777, belonging to the 
library of D. H. McAlpin of this city." 

Conspicuous among the claims of Wither- 
spoon upon the grateful applause of the nation 
is the fullness of his confidence in Washington, 
and the uncompromising fidelity of his ad- 
herence to him through evil report and good 
report. This merit is the more conspicuous 
as it contrasts so strongly with the luke- 



150 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

warmness, and even distrust and opposition, 
of not a few in the Continental Congress, 
whose course at various times during the war 
made the great heart of Washington to ache 
and put the country's cause in jeopardy. 

In Bancroft's fourteenth chapter we read : 

*' In Congress, which had become distracted 
by selfish schemes, there were signs of im- 
patience at his (Washington's) superiority, 
and an obstinate reluctance to own that the 
depressed condition of the country was due 
to their having refused to heed his advice. 
In a projDOsition for giving him the power 
to remove generals, John Adams objected 
vehemently, saying : * In private life I am 
willing to respect and look up to him ; in 
this house I feel myself to be the superior 
of General Washington.' 

" Washington was surrounded by officers 
willing to fill the ears of members of Con- 
gress with clamor against his management 
or opinions in counteraction of his advice. 

" With unselfish and untiring zeal. Wash- 



THE REVOLUTION. 151 

ington strove to repair the errors and defects 
of Congress. From the weakness of its 
powers it would justly escape reprehension 
if its members had unanimously given him 
their support, but some of them indulged in 
open expressions of discontent. 

"Assuming the style of conquerors, they 
did not, and would not, perceive the true sit- 
uation of affairs. They were vexed that the 
commander-in-chief insisted on bringing it 
to their attention ; and as if Washington had 
not adventured miracles of daring, Samuel 
Adams and others were habitually impatient 
for more enterprise. 

" Washington bore their unjust reproaches 
with meekness and dignity, never forgetting 
the obedience and respect that were due to 
Congress as his civil superior and the repre- 
sentative of all the States.'' 

Now, while even patriots like Samuel and 
John Adams, to say nothing of men of lower 
grade, were misled to censure where they 
should have applauded, it is something well 



152 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

worthy of observation and admiration that 
Witherspoon was always on the side of the 
Father of his Country. 

Not least prominent among the features of 
Dr. Witherspoon's character was his mascu- 
line and decided piety. 

''His personal religion," writes one, "is 
well known. Few men were ever more 
anxious to walk close with God, and by a 
solid, righteous and pious life to adorn the 
doctrine of the gospel. Besides the daily 
devotions of the closet and the family, he 
regularly set apart with his household the 
last day of every year for fasting, humilia- 
tion and prayer. He was also in the prac- 
tice of spending days in secret exercises of 
this kind as occasion required." 

As to his theology, we hardly need the as- 
surance that " it was Calvinistic according to 
the system of Calvin himself, subject only to 
the modification which it has received in the 
standards of the Presbyterian Church. Be- 
tween him and Calvin, indeed, there was in 



THE REVOLUTION. 153 

talents and improvements no inconsiderable 
resemblance. Both were men of great in- 
tellectual powers, both eminent divines, both 
distinguished heads of literary institutions, 
both erudite civilians and both keen satirists. 
Dr. Witherspoon certainly possessed a pecu- 
liar talent for presenting the Calvinistic doc- 
trines in a popular form, and in a manner 
the least offensive to those who do not hold 
them, while he maintained them firmly in 
their substance." 

Of Witherspoon, Dr. Aslibel Green writes: 
" In person Dr. Witherspoon was of the 
middle size. He was fleshy, with a tendency 
to corpulence. His limbs were well propor- 
tioned and his complexion fair. His eyes 
were strongly indicative of intelligence. His 
eyebrows were large, hanging down at the 
ends next his temples. His countenance 
united gravity with benignity in its general 
expression. The features of his face possessed 
much of what painters denominate chara3ter, 
and of course he was a good subject for the 



154 PRESBYTERIANS AXD 

pencil. His public appearance was always 
graceful and venerable, and in promiscuous 
company he had more of the quality called 
presence than any other individual with 
whom the writer has ever had intercourse, 
Washington excepted. 

" Dr. Witherspoon was a man of genius. 
His chief mental strength lay in his reason- 
ing faculty. He was a powerful thinker. 
When he took hold of a subject, he searched 
it to the bottom, and in discussing it he often 
treated it analytically and synthetically. It 
was surprising to observe with what readiness 
he could see through a complicated and per- 
plexed subject, estimate its real merits and 
bearing, disentagle it and present it in its true 
aspect." 

At length the three weeks through which 
action on the resolution on Independence 
was postponed draw to a close. On Friday, 
June 28, Witherspoon and the other New 
Jersey delegates take their seat in Congress. 
The resolution comes up, and a further post- 



THE REVOLUTION. 155 

ponement is suggested to enable the newly- 
arrived members to become more familiar 
with the momentous matter in hand. To 
this suggestion Dr. Witherspoon answered 
that for one he was no stranger to the sub- 
ject, and that he was ready for action. To 
tlie suggestion that the colonies were not ripe 
for the measure he answered that in his judg- 
ment " they were rotting for the want of it." 

The motion was carried that on Monday, 
July the first, the House go into a committee 
of the whole upon the subject. Monday 
came, and fifty members were in their seats. 
They sat, as usual, with closed doors. The 
committee on the Declaration had made 
their report, and that report lay on the table. 
All that day the resolution was debated, and 
at the close nine colonies voted for it. South 
Carolina and Pennsylvania voted unani- 
mously against, and Delaware was divided. 

On Tuesday the House again went into 
committee of the whole, and the discussion 
was continued, and at the close twelve colo- 



156 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

nies voted for it, New York not voting. A 
day intervened, and on Thursday, at the 
close of the day, the same twelve colonies 
passed the Declaration of Independence, New 
York assenting afterward. During the de- 
bates of these four momentous days the 
measure encountered strenuous opposition. 
Dickenson, of Pennsylvania, one of the most 
respected and one of the ablest members of 
the House, opposed the measure in a pro- 
tracted and elaborate argument. 

Of the following synopsis of Mr. Dickin- 
son's argument Mr. Bancroft says : " It is 
from a report made by himself that I 
abridge his elaborate discourse, using no 
words but his own. 

" ' I value the love of my country,' said 
Mr. Dickinson, * as I ought, but I value my 
country more ; and I desire this illustrious 
assembly to witness the integrity, if not the 
policy, of my conduct. The first campaign 
will be decisive of the controversy. The 
Declaration will not strengthen us by one 



THE REVOLUTION. 157 

man or by the least supply, while it may 
expose our soldiers to additional cruelties. 

" ' No instance is recollected of a people, 
without a battle fought or an ally gained, 
abrogating for ever their connection with a 
warlike commercial empire. It might unite 
the different parties in Great Britain against 
us, and create disunion among ourselves. 

" ' With other powers it would rather in- 
jure than avail us. Foreign aid will not 
be obtained but by our actions in the field, 
which are the only evidences of our union 
and vigor that will be respected. In the war 
between the United Provinces and Spain, 
France and Eugland assisted the provinces 
before they declared themselves independent. 
If it is the interest of any European kingdom 
to aid us, we shall be aided without such a 
Declaration; if it is not, we shall not be 
aided with it. 

" ' Before such an irrevocable step shall be 
taken, we ought to know the disposition of 
the great powers, and how far they will 



158 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

permit any one or more of them to inter- 
fere. 

" ^ The erection of an independent empire 
on this continent is a phenomenon in the 
world. Its effects will be immense, and may 
vibrate round the globe. How they may 
affect or may be supposed to affect old es- 
tablishments is not ascertained. 

" * It is singularly disrespectful to France 
to make the declaration before her sense is 
known, as we have sent an agent expressly 
to inquire whether such a declaration would 
be acceptable to her, and we have reason to 
believe he is now arrived at the court of 
Versailles. The measure ought to be de- 
layed till the common interest shall in the 
best manner be consulted by common consent. 

" ' Besides, the door to accommodation with 
Great Britain ought not to be shut until we 
know what terms can be obtained from some 
competent j)ower. Thus to break with her 
before we have compacted with another is to 
make experiments on the lives and liberties 



THE REVOLUTION. 159 

of my countrymen, which I would sooner die 
than agree to make. At best, it is to throw 
us into the hands of some other power and 
to lie at its mercy, for we shall have passed 
the river that is never to be repassed. We 
ought to retain the declaration, and remain 
masters of our own fame and fate. We ought 
to inform that power that we are filled with 
a just detestation of our oppressors — that 
we are determined to cast off for ever all 
subjection to them, and to declare ourselves 
independent, and to support that declaration 
with our lives and fortunes, provided that 
power will approve the proceeding, acknow- 
ledge our independence and enter into a 
treaty with us upon equitable and advan- 
tageous conditions. 

"^ Other objections to the Declaration at 
this time are suggested by our internal cir- 
cumstances. The formation of our govern- 
ment and an agreement upon the terms of 
our confederation ought to precede the as- 
sumption of our station among sovereigns. 



160 PEESBTT^IANS AND 

A sovereignty composed of several distinct 
bodies of men not subject to established 
constitutions, and not combined together by- 
confirmed articles of union, is such a sov- 
ereignty as has never appeared. These par- 
ticulars would not be unobserved by for- 
eign kingdoms and States, and they will 
wait for other proofs of political energy be- 
fore they will treat us with the desired at- 
tention. 

'* 'With respect to ourselves the consider- 
ation is still more serious. The forming of 
ou:* government is a new and difficult work. 
When this is done, and the people perceive 
that they and their posterity are to live 
under well-regulated constitutions, they will 
be encouraged to look forward to independ- 
en(3e as completing the noble system of their 
po'.itical happiness. The objects nearest to 
thcim are now enveloped in clouds, and those 
more distant appear confused. The relation 
one citizen is to bear to another, and the 
connection one State is to have with another, 



THE REVOLUTION. 161 

tliey do not, cannot, know. Mankind are 
naturally attached to plans of government 
that promise quiet and security. General 
satisfaction with them when formed would, 
indeed, be a great point attained ; but per- 
sons of reflection will perhaps think it ab- 
solutely necessary that Congress should in- 
stitute some mode for preserving them from 
future discords. 

'' ' The confederation ought to be settled 
before the declaration of independence. 
Foreigners will think it most regular. The 
weaker States will not be in so much danger 
of having disadvantageous terms imposed 
upon them by the stronger. If the Decla- 
ration is first made, political necessities may 
urge on the acceptance of conditions highly 
disagreeable to parts of the Union. The 
present comparative circumstances of the 
colonies are now tolerably well understood. 
But some have very extraordinary claims to 
territory, which, if admitted, as they might be 

in a future confederation, the terms of it not 
11 



162 PBESBYTElirANS AND 

being yet adjusted, all idea of the present 
comparisons between them would be con- 
founded. Those whose boundaries are ac- 
knowledged would sink in proportion to the 
elevation of their neighbors. 

'"Besides, the unlocated lands not compre- 
hended within acknowledged boundaries are 
deemed a fund sufficient to defray a vast 
part, if not the whole, of the exj)enses of the 
w^ar. These ought to be considered as the 
property of all, acquired by the arms of all. 
For these reasons the boundaries of the colo- 
nies ought to be fixed before the declaration, 
and their resj)ective rights mutually guaran- 
teed ; and the unlocated lands ought also, pre- 
vious to that declaration, to be solemnly ap- 
propriated to the benefit of all, for it may 
. be extremely difficult, if not impracticable, to 
obtain these decisions afterward. 

" * Upon the whole, when things shall thus 
be deliberately rendered firm at home and 
favorable abroad, then let America, "Attolens 
humeris famam et fata nepotum " — bearing 



THE REVOLUTION. 16^ 

upon her shoulders glory and the destiny of 
her descendants — advance with majestic steps 
and assume her station among the sovereigns 
of the world.' " 

Now, when we consider the character and 
ability of the man who spoke these words, 
and ponder well the words themselves, we 
shall feel that together they must have 
carried with them a prodigious weight. 

John Dickinson, " the illustrious farmer " 
of Pennsylvania, was one who "had been 
taught from infancy to love humanity and 
liberty." His claims to public respect all 
acknowledged. " He was honored for spot- 
less morals, eloquence and good service in 
the colonial legislature, and his writings 
had endeared him to America as a sincere 
friend of liberty. He had an excellent heart, 
and the cause of his country lay near it." 

In 1767 he had written sentences that rang 
through all the colonies. Respecting the 
British scheme of taxation, he wrote : " This 
is an innovation^ and a most dangerous inno- 



164 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

vation. We being obliged to take commod- 
ities from Great Britain, special duties on 
their exportation to us are as much taxes 
upon us as those imposed by the Stamp Act. 
We are in the situation of a besieged city 
surrounded in every part but one. If that 
is closed up, no step can be taken but to 
surrender at discretion. 

"I would persuade the people of these 
colonies immediately, vigorously and unani- 
mously to exert themselves in the most firm 
but the most peaceable manner for obtaining 
relief. If an inveterate resolution is formed 
to annihilate the liberties of the governed, 
English history affords examples of resist- 
ance by force." 

Thus wrote this able, wise and pure pa- 
triot in 1767 ; nor was his patriotism any the 
less above question in 1776. 

Besides, if we recall to mind the circum- 
stances of the hour, we can see that in many 
ears his words had the ring of the soundest 
wisdom, and can realize in some degree the 



PRESBYTERIANS AND 165 

heroic intrepidity and indomitable resolution 
required in those who took the opposite view 
and urged to immediate action. 

But in behalf of the Declaration Adams 
thundered like a Demosthenes and Wither- 
sjDOon pleaded like a Cicero. 

*' When the Declaration of Inde2oendence 
was under debate" — we quote the words of 
the Eev. Dr. John M. Krebs, of New York 
— " doubts and forebodings were whispered 
through the hall. The House hesitated, 
wavered, and for a while liberty and slavery 
appeared to hang in even scale. It was then 
that an aged patriarch arose — a venerable 
and stately form, his head white with the 
frost of years. 

" Every eye went to him with the quick- 
ness of thought and remained with the fixed- 
ness of the polar star. He cast on the as- 
sembly a look of inexpressible interest and 
unconquerable determination, while on his 
visage the hue of age was lost in the flush of 
burning patriotism that fired his cheek. 



1G3 PRESBYTERIANS AND THE REVOLUTION. 

" ^ There is,' said he, ^ a tide in the affairs 
of men, a nick of time. We perceive it now 
before us. To hesitate is to consent to our 
own shivery. That noble instrument upon 
your table, which ensures immortality to its 
author, should be subscribed this very morn- 
ing by every pen in this house. He that 
will not respond to its accents and strain 
every nerve to carry into effect its provisions 
is unworthy the name of freeman. 

« ' For my own j^art, of property I have 
some, of reputation more. That reputation 
is staked, that property is pledged, on the 
issue of this contest; and although these 
gray hairs must soon descend into the sepul- 
chre, I would infinitely rather that they de- 
scend thither by the hand of the executioner 
than desert at this crisis the sacred cause of 
my country.' " 

" Witherspoon, of New Jersey," says Mr. 
Bancroft, " urged that the country was fully 
ripe for the great decision, and that delay 
alone was fraught with iDcril." 



CHAPTER X. 

ORGANIZATION OF THE CONFEDERACY. 

IVTEXT in importance to the Declaration 
was the organization of the colonies into 
a confederacy. Independence of Great Brit- 
ain might be secured by victory in the field, 
and yet little but confusion and oft-recurring 
and protracted intestine conflict ensue, un- 
less the isolated States were drawn together 
into a harmonious and compact national 
Union. 

Judge Story, in his fourth chapter on 
" The Constitution," writes : " The union of 
the colonies during the Revolution *grew 
out of the exigencies and dangers of the 
times, and would naturally terminate with 
the return of peace.' 

^' As little could it escape observation how 
great would be the dangers of the separation 

167 



168 PEESBYTERIANS AND 

of the confederated States into independent 
communities, acknowledging no common head 
and acting upon no common system. Rival- 
ries, jealousies, real or imaginary wrongs, 
diversities of local interests and institutions, 
would soon sever the ties of a common at- 
tachment which bound them together, and 
bring on a state of hostile operations dan- 
gerous to their peace and subversive of their 
permanent interests." 

At this late day it is not unnatural to as- 
sume that the organization of a permanent 
confederation was as easy as the need of it 
was obvious. And yet the fact is that so 
many and obstinate were the difficulties that 
stood in the way that from the time when 
Franklin first made the motion for it in Con- 
gress to the time when the confederacy was 
actually organized more than five long years 
passed away. And it was more than sixteen 
months after Congress appointed a committee 
consisting of one member from each colony 
to digest a plan for a confederation before 



THE REVOLUTION. 169 

Congress adopted a plan and by vote sub- 
mitted it to the colonies for their assent. 
And then four years more elapsed before 
the assent of the colonies could be secured. 

The difiiculties that impeded the formation 
of a confederate union were clearly set forth 
in the circular transmitted with the articles 
as adopted by Congress to the several State 
legislatures. In this circular Congress thus 
excuses itself for apparent tardiness in the 
matter: "To form a permanent union ac- 
commodated to the opinions and wishes of 
the delegates of so many States differing in 
habits, produce, commerce and internal police 
was found to be a work which nothing but 
time and reflection, conspiring with a dispo- 
sition to conciliate, could mature and accom- 
plish." 

The main hindrance to the formation of a 
Federal Union centred around the reluctance 
of the several States to yield to a general 
government any of the powers they pos- 
sessed. 



170 PBESBYTEBfANS AND 

" There was not," writes Mr. Bancroft, " at 
that time one single statesman who fully com- 
prehended the need of the country." 

We more than suspect that there was at least 
one exception to this sweeping remark. Still, 
at that time " each one of the colonies con- 
nected its idea of freedom and safety with 
the exclusive privilege of managing its in- 
ternal policy. And they delighted to keep 
fresh the proud memories of repeated victo- 
ries won over the persistent attempt of the 
agents of a supreme power which was exter- 
nal to themselves to impose restrictions on 
their domestic autonomy." 

Edward Rutledge, of South Carolina, "saw 
danger in the ve^y thought of an indissoluble 
league of friendship between the States for 
their general welfare." And of even the 
little less than anarchical scheme proposed 
in Congress in July, 1776, he said : " If it 
be adopted, nothing less than ruin to some 
colonies will be the consequence." 

It is no wonder, therefore, that we read 



THE REVOLUTION. 171 

that " seemingly irreconcilable differences of 
opinion left Congress no heart to continue 
the work of confederation." 

For sixteen months from the report of a 
plan of confederation '' the spirit of separa- 
tion fostered by opposing interests," dread 
of interference of one State in the affairs of 
another, fears on the part of the South of the 
more compact and homogeneous North, " vis- 
ibly increased in Congress." 

Each colony retained a traditional jealousy 
of any interference from without with its inter- 
nal privileges. As they had forbidden king 
and parliament, so now they forbade any con- 
federate government, to levy taxes or duties 
except for postage. The relation of slaves to 
freemen in the basis of representation formed 
another vexing question. Another, not less 
troublesome, was whether the smaller States 
should have equal vote in the Congress with 
the larger ones. And as arduous as any 
other ijroblem was that involved in the con- 
flicting claims to the vast territories of west- 



172 PBESBYTEItlANS AND 

erii lands. New Hampshire and five or six 
other States had boundaries well defined. 
But other of the colonies extended, accord- 
ing to their charters, to the Mississippi, or 
even to the Pacific Ocean. The former in- 
sisted that this vast western domain ought to 
be a joint property, while the latter claimed 
each its own share for its own purposes as a 
source of revenue. On this point Judge 
Story writes : 

"This subject was one of a perpetually 
recurring and increasing irritation, and the 
confederation would never have been acceded 
to if Virginia and New York had not at last 
consented to make liberal cessions of the ter- 
ritory within their respective boundaries for 
national purposes." 

Thus years rolled away ere a confederation 
became possible. 

Now, a point on which Presbyterians love 
to dwell is the inherent tendency of their 
system toward organization. Just as natu- 
rally as the seed germinates Presbyterianism 



THE REVOLUTION, 173 

organizes. It is itself an organism ; and if 
Nature abhors a vacuum, Presbyterian ism 
abhors disintegration or anything that tends 
thereto. 

" Everything organic," writes Dr. Charles 
Hodge, "has what may be called a nisus 
fonnativiis, an inward force by which it is 
impelled to assume the form suited to its 
nature." 

Thus Presbyterianism " is not an external 
framework. It is a real growth. It is the 
outward expression of an inward law." A 
score of Presbyterians, shipwrecked in help- 
less exile upon a distant shore, would as cer- 
tainly organize by the election of a pastor 
and a body of elders to rule them as the sun 
is sure to rise in the morning. Possessed of 
this spirit, it is the most natural thing in the 
world that Presbyterianism should demand 
order and organization wherever practicable 
in all with which it has to do. And Dr. 
Witherspoon being a Presbyterian from the 
crown of his head to the sole of his foot, it 



174 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

was one of the most natural things in the 
world that he, when the subject of organizing 
the chaos of independent States into a com- 
pact system of order and subordination came 
before Congress, should at once see its neces- 
sity, believe in its practicability, and throw 
all the energy of his nature into the effort 
for its realization. Accordingly, in Sander- 
son's " Lives of the Signers of the Declara- 
tion " we read : 

" Dr. Witherspoon warmly maintained the 
absolute necessity of union to impart vigor 
and success to the measures of government, 
and he strongly combated the opinion ex- 
pressed in Congress that a lasting confed- 
eracy among the Stales was imj^racticable. 
He declared that such sentiments were cal- 
culated greatly to depress the minds of the 
people and weaken their efforts in defence 
of the country. 

" ' I confess,' said he, ' such a conviction 
would to me greatly diminish the glory and 
importance of the struggle, whether consid- 



THE REVOLUTION. 175 

ered as for the rights of mankind in general, 
or for the pros]3erity and happiness of this 
continent in future times. It would quite 
depreciate the object of hope, as well as place 
it at a greater distance. 

" * For what would it signify to risk our 
possessions and shed our blood to set our- 
selves free from the encroachments and op- 
pressions of Great Britain, with a certainty, 
as soon as peace was settled with them, of a 
more lasting war, a more unnatural, a more 
bloody and much more hopeless war among 
the colonies themselves ? 

" ^ If, at present, when the danger is yet 
imminent, when it is so far from being over 
that it is but coming to its height, we shall 
find it impossible to agree upon the terms of 
this confederacy, what madness is it to sup- 
pose that there ever wall be a time or that 
circumstances will so change as to make it 
even probable that it will be done at an after 
season ! Will not the very same difficulties 
that are in our way be in the way of those 



176 presbyte:^ians and 

who shall come after us ? Is it possible that 
they should be ignorant of or inattentive to 
them? Will they not have the same jeal- 
ousies of each other, the same attachment 
to local prejudices or particular interests? 
So certain is this that I look upon delay here 
as in the repentance of a sinner, though it 
adds to the necessity yet augments the diffi- 
culty and takes away from the inclination.' " 

A sentiment expressed in this debate that 
it was to be expected from the nature of men 
that a time must come when a confederacy 
would be dissolved and broken in pieces, 
and which seemed to create an indifference 
as to the success of the measure, produced 
the following burst of eloquence : 

'' I am none of those who either deny or 
conceal the depravity of human nature till 
it is purified by the light of truth and re- 
newed by the Spirit of the living God. Yet 
I apprehend there is no force in that reason- 
ing at all. Shall we establish nothing good 
because we know it cannot be eternal ? Shall 



THE REVOLUTION, 177 

we live without government because every 
constitution lias its old age and its period? 
Because we know that we shall die, shall we 
take no pains to preserve or lengthen out 
life ? Far from it, sir. It only requires the 
more watchful attention to settle the govern- 
ment on the best principles and in the wisest 
manner, that it may last as long as the nature 
of things will admit/' 

Dr. Witherspoon concluded his eloquent 
arguments in favor of a well-planned con- 
federation in the following terms : 

" For all these reasons, sir, I humbly ap- 
j)rehend that every argument from honor, 
interest, safety and necessity conspires in 
pressing us to a confederacy ; and if it be 
seriously attempted, I hope, by the blessing 
of God upon our endeavors, it will be happily 
accomplished." 

Grouping together, then, these facts among 
others — the fact that Presbyterianism is in 
its own nature a system of pure representa- 
tive republican government, and as such in 

12 



178 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

striking harmony, both in form and spirit, 
with that of the State and nation ; that 
it has always been peculiarly odious to ty- 
rants ; the numerous patriotic deliverances 
of the Synod of New York and Philadel- 
phia and of some of the Presbyteries of 
our Church; the fact that ^'the first voice 
publicly raised in America to dissolve all 
connection with Great Britain " was that of 
the Presbyterians, the Westmoreland county 
resolutions and the Mecklenburg Declara- 
tion ; the fact that Witherspoon, a Presby- 
terian of the most authentic type, repre- 
sented in the Continental Congress the com- 
pact Presbyterianism of the land, and that 
(besides his other numerous and exceed- 
ingly important services) he threw the whole 
weight of his own personal influence and 
that of those he represented, first in favor 
of the Declaration of Independence and 
then in favor of the organization of the 
States into a confederate union, — and we 
have some of the grounds upon which to 



THE REVOL UTION. 1 79 

base an estimate of tlie share which Presby- 
terians had in building and launching that 
national vessel that now rides so proudly upon 
the billows with forty millions of voyagers 
on board. 



CHAPTER XI. 

MONUMENT TO WITHERSPOON. 

TF God bade his Israel to take stones from 
-^ the river's bed and build them into a 
monument of the Jordan jDassage, will he 
look with disfavor upon us if we gather some 
stones from the bed of our national Jordan, 
and taking some of the brass we dig from 
our hills shape it into the form and features 
of the devout, devoted, patriotic Wither- 
spoon, and set up that figure upon those 
stones before the eyes of men, there to stand 
through coming generations, a mute but elo- 
quent witness of what God did in those early 
days of heroism and trial for our beloved 
country through his agency and that of 
those he represented ? 

1. Such a monument will stand as an ap- 
propriate indication of the existence, claims 
and services of religion in our country. 

ISO 



THE REVOLUTION. 181 

Our parks and public places abound with 
statues of secular worthies — ^statesmen, heroes, 
artists, poets and others — and is religion noth- 
ing that it should have no such represent- 
ative among them ? 

The tourist abroad who visits the city of 
Worms, in Germany, has his attention ar- 
rested by the magnificent statue of Luther, 
and catches anew the heroic spirit of the 
Reformation as he gazes at that noble form, 
the eyes raised to heaven, his left hand hold- 
ing to his body a copy of the word of God, 
his right hand closed and laid firmly down 
upon it, and on his mute li]3s and determined 
brow the daring purpose, " I'll go to Worms 
though as many devils hinder as there are 
tiles on the roofs of the houses." 

At Oxford, England, we see the marble 
forms of Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer stand- 
ing there where their hot ashes smoked to 
heaven, for ever reciting with their pure pale 
lips the story of their burning; and what 
lover of the Lord Jesus as he gazes on those 



182 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

forms does not feel through his frame a 
thrill of the martyr-spirit ? At Bedford the 
statue of Bunyan rises before us ; and as we 
look and muse we think of his twelve years 
in Bedford jail, with his j^oor blind daughter 
at his knees, and seem to hear from those 
mute lips the recital again of the pilgrim's 
immortal tale. At Kidderminster we see 
the statue of Richard Baxter, " his uplifted 
hands," in the w^ords of Dean Stanley, "call- 
ing to the unconverted, as of the seventeenth 
so of the nineteenth century, to turn and live, 
his serene countenance telling us of the un- 
seen and better world where ^ there remain- 
eth a rest for the people of God/ " At Ed- 
inburgh the statue of Andrew Melville recalls 
the heroism that both baffled the wiles and 
defied the threats of the bad regent Morton. 
At Glasgow you see the form of Knox tow- 
ering over the city, and every element of 
manhood in you awakens to new energy as 
you gaze upon the form of that man amongst 
men. 



THE REVOLUTION. 183 

But where in the parks and public places 
of our rej)ublic will you find one solitary 
statue to a Christian hero? Is it not time 
that this monojDoly of secularism be broken 
up ? — that by such a statue as we propose the 
throngs who visit our public places be re- 
minded that our thoughts are not wholly 
engrossed with life's secularities, and that the 
memories of those who have preached with 
lip and life the great salutary ti-uths of 
Christ's religion have place in our memories 
and in our hearts ? 

2. Such a monument will symbolize the in- 
separable union between religion and freedom. 

Witherspoon was at once an ardent Chris- 
tian and an ardent patriot, and his princij^les 
of civil freedom he derived from his religion. 

Indeed, no feature of our whole Revolu- 
tionary movement was more prominent than 
its religious spirit. The great body of the 
colonists were exiles for conscience' sake. 
Almost invariably, when the earlier public 
meetings were called, they were opened with 



184 PEESBYTBRIANS AND 

prayer. Almost without exception the pas- 
tors of the people were among the most 
forward and most eloquent champions of 
the cause. 

Of these men, Jonathan Mayhew, of Bos- 
ton, may stand as the type. As early as 
1750 we find him preaching resistance to 
" the first small beginnings of civil tyranny, 
lest it should swell to a torrent and deluge 
empires." Of like spirit was the eloquent 
Samuel Cooper, pastor of the Brattle Street 
church, in Boston. When the freemen " on 
the rivers Watauga and Holstein," in Ten- 
nessee, met together, as early as the opening 
of 1775, they appointed their pastor. Be v. 
Charles Cummings, as chairman of their 
committee, who expressed his own spirit and 
theirs in the words, " We are deliberately 
and resolutely determined never to surren- 
der any of our inestimable privileges but at 
the expense of our lives." 

On this point we cite also the following 
from the pen of the well-known writer 



THE REVOLUTION. 185 

J. T. Headley, published recently in the 
" New York Observer :" 

"The approaching Centennial has sud- 
denly awakened attention to our early strug- 
gle for independence. It cannot but have a 
salutary effect to recall the scenes and events 
of that time, and to comiDare its leaders and 
statesmen with those who control our politi- 
cal dostinies to-day, and may, perhaps, lead 
to a new political departure. But if the 
pulpit and clergy of that period do not have 
a large place in the imposing ceremonials 
proposed to be inaugurated, it will but half 
fulfill its true object and teach but half the 
lesson a true history of the devolution should 
impart. In New England the Revolution 
rested on the pulpit. It almost alone trained 
the people in the knowledge of their political 
rights and made the cause of freedom the 
cause of God. This is seen in the fact that 
the Massachusetts house of representatives 
passed a resolution requesting the clergy of 
the colony to preach on weekdays on polit- 



186 PRESBYTEBIANS AND 

ical subjects. One can trace in the annual 
election-sermons, as they were called, the 
progress of the popular feeling. These were 
preached every spring before the house of 
delegates on the election of a council to His 
Majesty's governor of the colony, and always 
took up the question of political rights, and 
discussed ably the doctrine of human free- 
dom and the reciprocal duties and obliga- 
tions of the governed and their rulers. They 
were afterward printed in a pamj)lilet form 
and scattered broadcast over the land. It 
must be remembered that there were scarcely 
any newspapers at that time, and the pulpit 
and the clergy were almost the only chan- 
nels of communication between the civil au- 
thority and the people. England saw with 
alarm the tremendous power the clergy 
wielded in the colonies, and declared that 
they were at the bottom of the rebellion. 
In 1774 the governor of Massachusetts re- 
fused the request of the assembly to appoint 
a public fast, giving the reason ' that the 



THE REVOLUTION. 187 

request was simply to give an opportunity 
for sedition to flow from the pulpit.' 

"Take these election-sermons from 1770 
to 1775, and you can see the footprints of the 
rebellion. At first dealing with general prin- 
ciples, they, as the oppressions of the mother- 
country increased, applied them to the exist- 
ing state of things, till the governor became 
alarmed at the outspoken truths he was com- 
pelled to listen to. Thus, in the spring after 
the tea had been thrown overboard, while Bos- 
ton w^as still rocking like a vessel in a storm 
under the popular excitement, Hitchcock, a 
thorough Cromwellian, was selected to preach 
the election-sermon. Rising in his place in 
the house of representatives, he thundered in 
the ears of the astonished governor, * When 
the wicked bear rule, the people mourn.' 
In that discourse the governor saw clearly 
the indications of the coming storm. The 
clergy w^ere actually in advance of the civil 
authorities in their views. In 1776, after 
the meeting of the first Continental Con- 



188 PRESBYTEMANS AND 

gress, William Godwin preached the elec- 
tion-sermon, and took his text from Jeremiah 
XXX. 20, 21 : * Their children shall be as 
aforetime, and their congregation shall be 
established before me, and I will punish all 
that would oppress them, and their nobles 
shall be of themselves/ After reading 
thus far, he paused a moment, and looking 
over the assembled members said in an 
altered tone, ^ The sentence is not perfected 
without the addition, ^^ And the government 
shall 2)yoceed from- the midst of them ;^' hut 
the wisdom of the Continental Congress, in 
which we cheerfully confide, has restrained 
me from making it a part of my text. In 
an abler hand, at some fitter time, it may of 
itself alone suffice for a comjjlete text. Amen: 
so let it he^ It is clear where he stands. 
He is more than ready for the Declaration 
of Independence. Let it come; and when it 
does, it will be thundered from every New 
England pulpit and startle every hearer like 
the blast of a bugle. 



THE REVOLUTION. 189 

^' But not only did tlie Revolution in New 
England rest on tlie shoulders of the clergy 
and the pulpit become the great recruiting 
station for the army, but a clergyman caused 
the first blow to be struck that has made Lex- 
ington immortal. It was on the village green, 
in front of Lexington church, of which Jonas 
Clark was pastor, that the first blood was shed 
and flowed from the veins of his own parish- 
ioners. Settled on a little farm, with a salary 
of eighty pounds a year and twenty cords 
of wood, he seemed destined to exert little 
influence outside of his small parish ; yet 
he started a movement that rent a kingdom 
asunder and is destined to revolutionize the 
civilized world. His wife was the cousin of 
John Hancock, and the two men spent many 
an hour discussing the great principles of 
human freedom and the rights of the colo- 
nies. The fruit of these discussions was 
given to his peoj^le from the pulpit and at 
the town-meetings. They, in turn, had these 
views embodied in instructions to their dele- 



190 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

gate to the provincial Legislature as express- 
ing their wishes and determinations, and they 
remain to this day on the town records as 
model papers. Mr. Everett once said : ^ They 
had no superiors and few equals.' He says, 
moreover : ^ Mr. Clark was of a class of cit- 
izens who rendered service second to no 
others in enlightening and animating the 
popular mind on the great question at issue. 
I mean the patriotic clergy of New Eng- 
land.' 

" Kev. William Ware said : 'There was no 
person at that time, in that vicinity — not only 
no clergyman, but no person of ivhatever call- 
ing or profession — who took a firmer stand 
for the liberties of his country.' In fact, he 
educated his people up to the point of resist- 
ance, and on that memorable morning of the 
19th of April, when at two o'clock the fierce 
clang of his own church-bell called his par- 
ishioners to the spot, they found their pastor 
already there to rouse their courage by his 
presence and appeals. The roll was called, 



THE REVOLUTION. 191 

and a hundred and fifty men answered to 
their names. What an impressive scene they 
presented, the pastor and his congregation, 
standing there in the dim starlight, under 
the shadow of that silent church, waiting 
for the clock of destiny to strike the hour ! 
As the pastor passed along the ranks every 
eye gleamed with more heroic fire, and every 
hand grasped the firelock with a firmer 
clutch. Clark had trained them for that 
hour. ' Would they fight V Hancock and 
Adams had asked. *Yes,' said Clark; 'not 
only would they fight, but die right there, 
under the shadow of the house of God, and 
in the presence of their pastor.' Afterward, 
in the sharp rattle of musketry that followed 
the order, ' Throw down your arms and dis- 
perse,' Mr. Clark heard what he knew would 
be the result of his own teachings. When 
the smoke cleared away and the British had 
retreated, he walked up and gazed long and 
silently on the seven stalwart men (his own 
parishioners) that lay stark and stiff in death. 



192 PBESBYTERIANS AND 

But he shed no tears, uttered no regrets. He 
only murmured in solemn tones, ^ From this 
day ivill be dated the liberty of the world.'' 
His prophetic eye saw clearly ' beyond that 
day's business.' And so, as we stated before, 
Hhe teachings of the j)'^^P^l of Lexington 
caused the first blow to be struck for Ameri- 
can independence.^ ^^ 

That the religious sentiment of the colo- 
nists should have been on the side of free- 
dom was perfectly natural. For the doc- 
trines of true religion come from the Bible, 
and it is there that the statesman learns that 
'' all men are created equal, and they are en- 
dowed by their Creator with certain inalien- 
able rights." The true equality of men was 
first practically exhibited when rich and 
poor, master and slave, male and female, sat 
down together at the same communion-table 
to eat of the same loaf and drink from the 
same cup. And all the sanctions of eternity 
are given to the doctrines of man's equality 
in the offer of the same heaven on precisely 



THE RE VOL UTION. 193 

the same terms to prince and peasant, igno- 
rant and enlightened. Further still, to the 
continued enjoyment of liberty a high degree 
of virtue is absolutely essential, and this vir- 
tue draws its life-blood from the religion of 
the word of God. 

Atheism prates of human rights, and we 
admit that an atheist has the same rights as 
he who recognizes and worships the God of 
heaven. But we affirm that on Ms own prin- 
ciples he has no rights that any one is bound 
to respect. I have certain inalienable rights 
because I am made in the image of my God, 
and who touches me touches God's image. 
I have certain inalienable rights because my 
Creator gave them to me, and who robs me 
robs Jehovah. But that atheist, who " un- 
tenants creation of its God," has by his creed 
abolished the only source of human rights. 
He is the product of blind, brutish, physical 
forces. His body and soul are the result of 
a fortuitous concourse of material atoms, and 
as such a being what rights can be his other 

13 



194 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

than such as belong to the tree on the moun- 
tain's side against tlie avalanche that grinds 
it to powder ? On the atheistic and infidel 
theory the only conceivable right is that 
which might bestows. The right is with the 
strongest. 

Let infidelity and materialistic atheism 
prevail in our republic, destroying the very 
foundations of human rights, liberating the 
human mind from the restraints of con- 
science and from all sense of obligation, all 
awe of God and all fear of future retribu- 
tion, and republican liberty and government 
perish for ever. 

Now, in a day when a materialistic infi- 
delity and atheism are floating in the air, 
breathing from the pages of magazine and 
newspaper, and even creeping into our school- 
books, is it »nwise, is it not at once a jDrivi- 
lege and duty, to take this idea and put it 
into bronze, and set it up where millions of 
eyes may see it ? The God of the Bible the 
only source, and the religion of the Bible the 



THE REVOLUTION. 195 

only conservator, of our inalienable rights. 
Eeligion and liberty for ever inseparable. 

3. Then the success of our Revolutionary 
struggle was due to the favor of God in an- 
swer to prayer. 

Is it not well to set up before men the 
figure of him who, in addition to his other 
services, was ever the mover in Congress 
for the appointment of those repeated days 
of fasting, humiliation and prayer which 
wrought so powerfully with the people to 
blend piety with patriotism, and to hallow 
all that was dear to love of country with all 
that was sacred in religion ? 

4. Such a monument will challenge the 
attention of our sons and daughters to the 
nature and historic glories of our cherished 
Presbyterian system, and to the style of cha- 
racter which it and the body of doctrine with 
which it is almost invariably allied tends to 
create. 

It is in great measure through lack of in- 
formation on these points that some of them 



196 PRESBYTEftlANS AND 

exchange their church for another as readily 
as they throw away an okl shoestring. And 
it is a sigh of the hour — 

" God, give us men ! A time like this demands 
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands ; 
Men whom the lust of office does not kill ; 

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy ; 
Men who possess opinions and a will ; 

Men who have honor ; men who Avill not lie." 

And not only men, but women too ! And a 
little familiarity with the records of the past 
will people the recollection with images of 
stalwart men and heroic women moulded and 
given to the world by Calvinistic Presbyte- 
rianism. 

No less truthfully than eloquently does 
the historian Froude write of Calvinism 
that it has "inspired and sustained the 
bravest efforts ever made by man to break 
the yoke of unjust authority." 

*' When all else has failed, when patriotism 
has covered its face and human courage has 
broken down, when intellect has yielded, as 



THE REVOLUTION. 197 

Gibbon says, witli a ^ smile or a sigli,' content 
to pliilosophize in the closet and abroad wor- 
ship with the vnlgar, when emotion and sen- 
timent and tender, imaginative piety have be- 
come the handmaids of superstition, and have 
dreamed themselves into forgetfulness that 
there is any difference between lies and truth, 
— the slavish form of belief called Calvinism, 
in one or other of its many forms, has borne 
ever an inflexible front to illusion and men- 
dacity, and has preferred rather to be ground 
to powder like flint than to bend before 
violence or melt under enervating tempta- 
tion." 

Our youth need to be taught, and perad- 
venture some of their elders reminded, that 
Coligny and his noble army of French Hu- 
guenots were to a man Calvinistic Presby- 
terians — that William the Silent and his 
Dutch heroes, who bore so heroically tlie 
long agony of Spanish oppression, and at 
last chased the cruel minions of Philip and 
the pope out of the Netherlands and built 



198 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

a republic on the ruins of despotism, were 
Calvinistic Presbyterians. 

What style of womanhood comes from the 
hands of Calvinistic Presbyterian ism we may 
see in the person of Goligny's wife, the noble 
Charlotte de Laval. The admiral, wounded 
and taken prisoner at the memorable battle 
of St. Quentin, had been conveyed to Ghent. 
During his sickness and imprisonment there 
his hand fell upon a copy of the word of 
God. As he read and mused he was led 
by the Spirit of God to accept salvation as 
offered in the gospel. Sitting one evening 
after his liberation and return to Chatillon 
upon a balcony of the castle, and at his side 
Charlotte his wife, who ^'was wonderfully 
given to the Reformed religion," they looking 
together at the silver stars, she said to him : 

"How wonderful that you and your 
brother Andelot should have been blest in 
your captivity with a knowledge of the 
truth ! And why do you not now publicly 
avow your faith as he has done ?" 



THE REVOLUTION. 199 

"Sound your soul/' he answered. "Are 
you prepared to hear of defection, to receive 
the reproaches of partisans as well as ene- 
mies, treasons of your friends, exile, shame, 
nakedness, hunger, even the hunger of your 
own children, your own death by an execu- 
tioner, after that of your husband ? I give 
you three weeks to consider." 

" They are gone already," replied his wife. 
" Do not bring upon your head the deaths 
of those three weeks, or I will myself bear 
witness against you at the judgment-seat of 
God." 

" Enough, madame," said he. " It was 
only for your sake that I thought of these 
terrors." 

At once he professed himself a follower of 
the Keformation. And on St. Bartholomew's 
bloody eve they stabbed him to death in his 
own chamber and threw his body out of the 
window, cut off his venerable head and sent 
it, a choice and welcome present, to the pope, 
and for three days the abjects of Paris 



200 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

dragged the lifeless trunk through the streets, 
and hung it up by the heels upon the gibbet. 

See, too, the heroic wife of John Welsh 
begging of England's coarse, cruel king the 
favor that her poor sick husband, fourteen 
years in exile and pining for a breath of his 
native air, might return to his home. 

"Whose daughter are you?" James de- 
manded. 

" The daughter of John Knox." 

"Knox and Welsh! The devil never 
made such a match as that." 

"Very like, Your Majesty ; we never asked 
his advice." 

" What children did your father leave ?" 

" Three, Your Majesty." 

" Were they lads or lasses ?" 

" Lasses, Your Majesty." 

" The Lord be praised ! Had they been 
lads, I could not have kept my seat upon 
my throne." 

Witherspoon was one of those banes of a 
later generation, and King George was not 



THE REVOLUTION. 201 

able to keep seat on the American portion of 
his throne. 

" But give him his native air, sir," begged 
the woman. 

" Give him the devil !" answered the bru- 
tal king. 

" Give that, sir, to your hungry courtiers." 

" Well, he may return if he will conform." 

Lifting her apron, she answered, "I would 
rather take his head here." 

And need we speak of Knox, whom Car- 
lyle pronounced " the bravest of all Scotch- 
men," whom Froude calls " the representa- 
tive of all that was best in Scotland," and 
of whom he adds, " no grander figure can be 
found in the history of the Keformation in 
this island"? 

It was quite in the course of things tliat 
Witherspoon should plead so earnestly in 
behalf of the Declaration, for the chief sen- 
timent of that immortal paper had been an- 
nounced by Knox, his great ancestor, two 
hundred years before. It was in the pres- 



202 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

ence of the beautiful but wicked Mary queen 
of Scots. 

" Think you," asked the queen, with indig- 
nant amazement — "think you that subjects, 
having the power, may resist their princes ?" 

To which Knox replied : " If princes ex- 
ceed their bounds, madam, no doubt they may 
be resisted even by power. For no greater 
honor or greater obedience is to be given to 
princes than God has ordained to be given 
to father and mother. But the father may 
be struck with a frenzy in which he would 
slay his children. Now, madam, if the 
children arise, join together, apprehend the 
father, take the sword from him, bind his 
hands and keep him in prison till the frenzy 
be over, think you, madam, that the children 
do any wrong ? Even so, madam, is it with 
princes that would murder the children of 
God that are subject unto them. Their 
blind zeal is nothing but a mad frenzy; 
therefore, to take the sword from them, to 
bind their hands and to cast them into prison 



THE REVOLUTION. 203 

till tliey be brought to a more sober mind is 
no disobedience against princes, but true 
obedience, because it agreeth with the will 
of God." 

"Thus spoke Calvinism," writes Froude, 
" the creed of republics." 

And Andrew Melville. 

The bad regent Morton, scowling and 
biting the head of his staff, growled: "There 
will never be quietness in this country till 
half a dozen of you be hanged or banished." 

"Tush, sir!" answered Melville; "threaten 
your courtiers after this manner. It is the 
same to me whether I rot in the air or under 
the ground. I have been ready to give my 
life where it would not be half so well ex- 
pended." 

And those brave Covenanters who spread 
their declaration of independence on the 
})road tombstone in Gray Friars' churchyard, 
and signed it, some of them, with a pen 
dipped in their veins, opened for the purpose. 

This covenant in its remotest conse- 



204 PRESBYTERIANS AND 

quences took off the head of Charles I., of 
Wentworth and Laud, the three great ty- 
rants who had bound England, Church and 
State, hand and foot Hke a very slave, and 
thus liberated England and saved constitu- 
tional liberty for the world. 

This is the sort of character that Calvin- 
istic Presbyterianism has given to the world. 
Would our society be any the worse for a few 
more like them ? AVould it harm our sons 
and daughters to receive a new endowment 
of this style of moral nerve and muscle ? 

5. Such a monument will be a ceaseless 
iteration of the fact that to a very large de- 
gree the seed whose fruit we, as citizens of 
this republic, are now harvesting, in our prin- 
ciples of civil and religious freedom, in our 
intellio-ence and means of culture and in the 
nation's marvelous march to greatness, was 
sown by Presbyterian hands. 

Finally, the unveiling of this statue during 
the Centennial period, with prayer and praise 
and oration, will call the attention of the na- 



THE REVOLUTION. 205 

tion and the world to these facts, reminding 
thera that the Presbyterian Cliurch is, in ; ts 
nature and form, a representative republc, 
and that, ever hated by tyrants, ever a cham- 
pion of truths that create moral nerve and 
muscle and fit men to dare and do and en- 
dure, it has deserved, and does deserve, a deep 
place in the gratitude and a high place in 
the admiration of the nation for its services 
in the cause of God and man. 



THE END. 




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